Page images
PDF
EPUB

upon the sin of loving you and your chil

dren?"

"I should like to have heard him preach to her," cried Monnier, fiercely. "No, he only tried to reason with me about matters he could not understand." "Strikes?"

not fear for me, I am not pinched as yet. I have had high wages for some years, and since I and Héloise came together, I have not wasted a sou out of doors, except in the way of public duty, such as making converts at the Jean Jacques and elsewhere; a glass of beer and a pipe don't cost much. And Héloise is such a housewife, so thrifty, scolds me if I buy her a ribbon, poor love! No wonder that I would pull down a society that dares to scoff at her — dares to say she is not my wife, and her children are baseborn. No, I have some savings left yet. War to society, war to the knife!"

"Well, not exactly strikes he did not contend that we workmen had not full right to combine and to strike for obtaining fairer money's worth for our work; but he tried to persuade me that where, as in my case, it was not a matter of wages, but of political principle of war against capitalists — I could but injure myself and mislead others. He "Monnier," said Lebeau, in a voice wanted to reconcile me to old Gérard, or that evinced emotion, "listen to me: I to let him find me employment else have received injuries from society which, where; and when I told him that my when they were fresh, half maddened me honour forbade me to make terms for - that is twenty years ago. I would myself till those with whom I was joined then have thrown myself into any plot were satisfied, he said, 'But if this lasts against society that proffered revenge; much longer, your children will not look but society, my friend, is a wall of very so rosy; then poor Héloise began to strong masonry, as it now stands; it may wring her hands and cry, and he took me be sapped in the course of a thousand aside and wanted to press money on me years, but stormed in a day — no. as a loan. He spoke so kindly that I dash your head against it you scatter could not be angry; but when he found your brains, and you dislodge a stone. I would take nothing, he asked me about Society smiles in scorn, effaces the stain, some families in the street of whom he and replaces the stone. I no longer war had a list, and who, he was informed, against society. I do war against a syswere in great distress. That is true; Item in that society which is hostile to am feeding some of them myself out of my savings. You see, this young Monsieur belongs to a society of men, many as young as he is, which visits the poor and dispenses charity. I did not feel I had a right to refuse aid for others, and I told him where his money would be best spent. I suppose he went there

when he left me."

"I know the society you mean, that of St. François de Sâles. It comprises some of the most ancient of that old noblesse to which the ouvriers in the great Revolution were so remorseless."

"We ouvriers are wiser now; we see that in assailing them, we gave ourselves worse tyrants in the new aristocracy of the capitalists. Our quarrel now is that of artisans against employers."

[ocr errors]

You

me-systems in France are easily overthrown. I say this because I want to use you, and I do not want to deceive."

"Deceive me, bah! You are an honest man," cried Monnier; and he seized Lebeau's hand, and shook it with warmth and vigour.

"But for you I should have been a mere grumbler. No doubt I should have cried out where the shoe pinched, and railed against laws that vex me; but from the moment you first talked to me I became a new man. You taught me to act, as Rousseau and Madame de Grantmesnil had taught me to think and to feel. There is my brother, a grumbler too, but professes to have a wiser head than mine. He is always warning me against you — against joining a strike against doing anything to endanger my skin. I always went by his advice till you taught me that it is well enough for women to talk and complain; men should dare and do."

[ocr errors]

." Of course, I am aware of that;, but to leave general politics, tell me frankly, How has the strike affected you as yet? I mean in purse? Can you stand its pressure? If not, you are above the "Nevertheless," said Lebeau, 66 your false pride of not taking help from me, a brother is a safer counseller to a père de fellow-conspirator, though you were justi- famille than I. I repeat what I have so fied in refusing it when offered by Raoul often said before: I desire, and I resolve de Vandemar, the servant of the Church." that the Empire of M. Buonaparte shall "Pardon, I refuse aid from any one, be overthrown. I see many concurrent except for the common cause. But do circumstances to render that desire and

resolve of practicable fulfilment. You desire and resolve the same thing. Up to that point we can work together. I have encouraged your action only so far as it served my design; but I separate from you the moment you would ask me to aid your design in the hazard of experiments which the world has never yet favoured, and, trust me, Monnier, the world never will favour."

"That remains to be seen," said Monnier, with compressed, obstinate lips. "Forgive me, but you are not young; you belong to an old school."

said Monnier, with a fierce gleam in his bold eyes.

"I tell you, all that is required at this moment is an evident protest of the artisans of Paris against the votes of the rurals' of France. Do you comprehend me?"

"I think so; if not, I obey. What we ouvriers want is what we have not got — a head to dictate action to us."

"See to this, then. Rouse the men you can command. I will take care that you have plentiful aid from foreigners. We may trust to the confrères of our council to enlist Poles and Italians; Gaspard le Noy will turn out the volunteer rioters at his command. Let the émeute be within, say a week, after the vote of the plébiscité is taken. You will need that time to prepare."

"Poor young man!" said Lebeau, re-adjusting his spectacles, "I recognize in you the genius of Paris, be the genius good or evil. Paris is never warned by experience. Be it so. I want you so much, your enthusiasm is so fiery, that I can concede no more to the mere senti- "Be contented it shall be done." ment which makes me say to myself, 'It "Good night, then." Lebenu leisurely is a shame to use this great-hearted, took up his hat and drew on his gloves wrong-headed creature for my personal then, as if struck by a sudden thought, ends.' I come at once to the point-he turned briskly on the artisan and said that is, the matter on which I seek you in quick blunt tones this evening. At my suggestion, you "Armand Monnier, explain to me why have been a ringleader in strikes which it is that you have terribly shaken the Imperial system, more than its Ministers deem; now I want a man like you to assist in a bold demonstration against the Imperial resort to a rural priest-ridden suffrage, on the part of the enlightened working class of Paris."

-a Parisian artisan, the type of a class the most insubordinate, the most self-conceited, that exists on the face of earth-take without question, with so docile a submission, the orders of a man who plainly tells you he does not sympathize in your ultimate objects, of whom you really know very little, and whose views you candidly own you think "In a day or two the result of the are those of an old and obsolete school

"Good!" said Monnier.

plebiscite will be known. The result of universal suffrage will be enormously in favour of the desire expressed by one man."

of political reasoners.”

"You puzzle me to explain," said Monnier, with an ingenuous laugh, that brightened up features stern and hard, though "I don't believe it," said Monnier, comely when in repose. "Partly, because stoutly. "France cannot be so hood-you are so straightforward, and do not winked by the priests." talk blague; partly, because I don't think "Take what I say for granted," re-the class I belong to would stir an inch sumed Lebeau, calmly. "On the 8th of unless we had a leader of another class this month we shall know the amount of and you give me at least that leader. the majority some millions of French Again, you go to that first stage which votes. I want Paris to separate itself we all agree to take, and well, do you from France, and declare against those want me to explain more? blundering millions. I want an émeute, or "Yes." rather a menacing démonstration — not a premature revolution, mind. You must avoid bloodshed."

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

"Eh bien! you have warned me, like an honest man; like an honest man I warn you. That first step we take together; I want to go a step further; you retreat, you say, 'No:' I reply you are committed; that further step you must take, or I cry 'traitre! — à la lanterne !' You talk of superior experience: bah! what does experience really tell you? Do you suppose that Louis Egalité, when he began to plot against Louis XVI.,

Hu

meant to vote for his kinsman's execu- there for protection, for sympathy, for tion by the guillotine? Do you suppose affection, for charity of human fellowthat Robespierre, when he commenced ship; give it what name you like, it is the his career as the foe of capital punish- same cry for companionship, and terror ment, foresaw that he should be the of the death of silence and absence. Minister of the Reign of Terror? Not man Sympathy, represented by inadea bit of it. Each was committed by his quate words or by clumsy exaggeration, use of those he designed for his tools: by feeble signs or pangs innumerable, by so must you be -or you perish." sudden glories and unreasonable ecstasies, is, when we come to think of it, among the most reasonable of emotions. It is life indeed; it binds us to the spirit of our race as our senses bind us to the material world, and makes us feel at times as if we were indeed a part of nature herself, and chords responding to her touch.

Lebeau, leaning against the door, heard the frank avowal he had courted without betraying a change of countenance. But when Armand Monnier had done, a slight movement of his lips showed emotion; was it of fear or disdain?

"Monnier," he said, gently; "I am so much obliged to you for the manly speech you have made. The scruples which my conscience had before entertained are dispelled. I dreaded lest I, a declared wolf, might seduce into peril an innocent sheep. I see I have to deal with a wolf of younger vigour and sharper fangs than myself; so much the better: obey my orders now; leave it to time to say whether I obey yours later. Au revoir."

From The Cornhill Magazine.
IN FRIENDSHIP.

Il faut dans ce bas monde aimer beaucoup de choses,
Pour savoir après tout ce qu'on aime le mieux.
I fut fouler au pieds des fleurs à peine écloses;
Il faut beaucoup pleurer, dire beaucoup d'adieux
De ces Liens passagers que l'on goûte à demi

People say that as a rule men are truer friends than women more capable of friendship. Is this the result of a classical education? Do the foot-notes, in which celebrated friendships are mentioned in brackets, stimulate our youth to imitate those stately togas, whose names and discourses come travelling down to us through two thousand years, from one country to another, from one generation to another, from one language to another, until they flash perhaps into the pages of Bohn's Classical Library, of which a volume has been lent to me from the study table on the hill? It is lying open at the chapter on friendship. "To me indeed, though he was snatched away, Scipio still lives, and will always live; for I love the virtue of a man, and assuredly of all things that either fortune or nature has bestowed upon me, I have none which I can compare with the friendship of Scipio." So says Cicero, speaking by the mouth of Lælius and of Bohn, and the generous thought still lives after many a transmigration, though it exists now in a world Sometimes it is not until they are gone where perhaps friendship is less thought that we discover who and what they were of than in the days when Scipio was to us those "good friends and true "mourned. Some people have a special with whom we were at ease, tranquil in gift of their own for friendship; they the security of their kind presence. Some transform a vague and abstract feeling of us, the longer we live, only feel more for us into an actual voice and touch and and more that it is not in utter loneliness response. As our life flows on “a torthat the greatest peace is to be found. A rent of impressions and emotions bounded little child starts up in the dark, and find-in by custom," a writer calls it whose own ing itself alone, begins to cry and toss deep torrent has long since overflowed in its bed, as it holds out its arms in search of a protecting hand; and men and women seem for the most part true to this first childish instinct as they awaken suddenly: (how strange these awakenings are, in what incongruous places and seasons do they come to us!) People turn helplessly, looking here and

Le meilleur qui nous reste est un ancien ami, ALFRED de Musset says, in his sonnet to Victor Hugo: and as we live on we find out who are in truth the people that we have really loved, which of our companions belongs to us, linked in friendship as well as by the chances of life or relationship.

any narrow confining boundaries - the mere names of our friends might for many of us almost tell the history of our own lives. As one thinks over the roll, each name seems a fresh sense, and explanation to the past. Some, which seem to have outwardly but little influence on our fate, tell for us the whole hidden

story of long years. One means per- serious sacrifice. If a friend is in trouhaps passionate emotion, unreasonable ble, we leave a card at his door, or go the reproach, tender reconciliation; another length of a note, perhaps. We absent may mean injustice, forgiveness, remorse; ourselves for months at a time without a while another speaks to us of all that we reason, and yet all of this is more want of have ever suffered, all that we hold most habit than of feeling; for, notwithstandsacred in life, and gratitude and trust un-ing all that is said of the world and its failing. There is one name that seems pompous vanities, there are still human to me like the music of Bach as I think beings among us, and, even after two of it, and another that seems to open at thousand years, true things seem to come the Gospel of St. Matthew. "My dear- to life again and again for each one of us, est friend," a young man wrote to his in this sorrow and that happiness, in one mother only yesterday, and the simple sympathy and another; and one day a words seemed to me to tell the whole his- vague essay upon friendship becomes the tory of their lives. true story of a friend.

"After these two noble fruits of friendship, peace in the affections, and support of the judgment, followeth the last fruit, which is like the pomegranate, full of many kernels. I mean aid and bearing a part in all actions and occasions," says Lord Bacon, writing in the spirit of Cicero three hundred years ago.

To be in love is a recognized state; relationship without friendship is perhaps too much recognized in civilized communities; but friendship, that best blessing of life, seems to have less place in its scheme than almost any other feeling of equal importance. Of course it has its own influence; but the outward life appears, on the whole, more given to business, to acquaintance, to ambition, to eating and drinking, than to the friends we really love and time passes, and convenience takes us here and there, and work and worry (that we might have shared) absorb us, and one day time is no more for our friendship.

One or two of my readers will understand why it is that I have been thinking of friendship of late, and have chosen this theme for my little essay, thinking that not the least lesson in life is surely that of human sympathy, and that to be a good friend is one of the secrets that comprise most others. And yet the sacrifices that we usually make for a friend's comfort or assistance are ludicrous when one comes to think of them. "One mina, two mina; are there settled values for friends, Antisthenes, as there are for slaves? For of slaves, one is perhaps worth two minæ, another not even half a mina, another five minæ, another ten." Antisthenes agrees, and says that some friends are not even worth half a mina; "and another," he says, "I would buy for my friend at the sacrifice of all the money and revenues in the world."

I am afraid that we modern Antisthenes would think a month's income a

In this peaceful island from whence I write we hear Cicero's voice, or listen to In Memoriam, as the Friend sings to us of friendship to the tune of the lark's shrill voice, or of the wave that beats away our holiday and dashes itself upon the rocks in the little bay. The sweet scents and dazzles of sunshine seem to harmonize with emotions that are wise and natural, and it is not until we go back to our common life that we realize the difference between the teaching of noble souls and the noisy bewildered translation into life, of that solemn printed silence.

Is it, then, regret for buried time,

That keenlier in sweet April wakes,
And meets the year, and gives and takes
The colours of the crescent prime?

Not all the songs, the stirring air,
The life re-orient out of dust,

Cry thro' the scene to hearten trust
In that which made the world so fair.

Here, then, and at peace, and out of doors in the spring-time, we have leisure to ask ourselves whether there is indeed some failure in the scheme of friendship and in the plan of that busy to-day in which our lives are passed; over-crowded with people, with repetition, with passing care and worry, and unsorted material. It is perhaps possible that by feeling, and feeling alone, some check may be given to the trivial rush of meaningless repetition by which our time is frittered away, our precious power of love and passionate affection given to the winds.

Sometimes we suddenly realize for the first time the sense of kindness, the treasure of faithful protection, that we have unconsciously owed for years, for our creditor has never claimed payment or reward, and we remember with natural emotion and gratitude that the time for payment is past; we shall be debtors all

our lives long-debtors made richer by one man's generosity and liberal friendship, as we may be any day made poorer in heart by unkindness or want of truth. Only a few weeks ago a friend passed from among us whose name for many, for the writer among the rest, spoke of a whole chapter in life, one of those good chapters to which we go back again and again. This friend was one of those who make a home of life for others, a home to which we all felt that we might come sure of a wise and unfailing sympathy. The door opens, the friend comes in slowly with a welcoming smile on his pale and noble face. Where find more delightful companionship than his? We all know the grace of that charming improvised gift by which he seemed able to combine disjointed hints and shades into a whole, to weave our crude talk and ragged suggestions into a complete scheme of humourous or more serious philosophy. In some papers published a few years ago in the Cornhill Magazine, called "Chapters on Talk," a great deal of his delightful and pleasant humour appears.

Occupying a foremost position among these, I find a small, but for its size exceedingly vigorous and active member of the garrulous species, to which the name "Perpetual-drop Talker" may perhaps be given with some degree of propriety. In dealing with a new branch of science, as I am now doing, the use of new terms is inevitable, and it is hoped that this one, and such other technical expressions as have been introduced in the course of these chapters, will be favourably received by talkstudents generally. The Perpetual-drop Talker then-I will venture to consider the term as accepted is a conversationalist of a species easily recognizable by all persons possessed of even moderate acuteness of perception. The chief and most remarkable characteristic of him is that his chatter is incessant, and that there issues from his mouth a perpetual dribble of words, which convey to the ears of those who hear them no sort of information worth having, no new thing worth knowing, no idea worth listening to. These talkers are found in the British Isles in great numbers. There is no difficulty in meeting with specimens. If you live in a street, and will only sit at your window for a sufficient length of time, one of them is sure to pass. He has a companion with him, the recipient of that small dropping talk. Perpetual Drop points with his stick, calling his friend's attention to a baker's shop what is he saying? He is saying, "Ah, German, you see: Frantzmann, German name. Great many German bakers in London: Germans and Scotch : nearly all bakers are either one or the other." You continue to watch, and you observe that this loquacious gentleman is again pointing. LIVING AGE.

VOL. III.

III

see.

[ocr errors]

66

"Where you see those houses," he is saying now, "there was nothing but green fields when Not a brick to be seen anyI was a boy. where." And so he goes on commenting on of, he seems obliged to put on record. “Pieeverything. Whatever his senses inform him bald horse," he says as one goes by him in an omnibus; 66 or, Curious smell," as he passes the fried-fish stall. This is the man with whom we have all travelled in railway-trains. He proclaims to his companion — a person much to be pitied-the names of the stations as the train arrives at each ‘Ah, Croydon,” he says; or, "Ah, Redhill, going to stop, I He makes his comments when they do "Little girl with fruit," he says; or, Boy with papers." Very likely he will imitate the peculiar cry of this last "Mornin' papaw," for his friend's benefit. This kind of talker may be studied very advantageously in railway-trains. He is familiar with technical terms. He remarks, when there is a stoppage, that we are "being shunted on to the up-line till the express goes by." Presently there is a shriek, and a shake, and a whirl, and then our friend looks round with triumph. This is a very wearying personage. it," he says; "Dover express, down-line." not be quiet. If he is positively run out and

stop.

[ocr errors]

66

"That was

He can

without a remark to make, he will ask a question. Instead of telling you what the station is, he will in this case ask you to tell him. What station is this?" is a favorite inquiry with him. He doesn't want to know: he is not going to stop at it: he merely asks because his mouth is full of words, and they must needs dribble out in some form or other.

In this case it takes an interrogative form. A cannot help tiresome individual this: one speculating how many times in the course of his life he has thought it necessary to inform his fellow-creatures that the morning has been fine or cold, as the case might be, and the weather generally seasonable, or the reverse.

I have not said much all this time about good listeners. They are scarce, almost as scarce as good talkers. A good listener is no egotist, but has a moderate opinion of himself, is possessed of a great desire of information on all kinds of subjects, and of a hundred other fine qualities. It is too much the general impression that listening is a merely negative proceeding, but such is very far from being really the case. A perfectly inert person is not a good listener, any more than a talk to manifest intelligence, to show interest, bolster is. You require the recipient of your and, what is more, to feel it. The fact is, that

to listen well

as to do anything else wellis not easy. It is not easy even to seem to listen well, as we observe notably in the conduct of bad actors and stage amateurs, who break down in this particular, perhaps more often and more frequently than in any other.

But it was even more in his society than in his writing that our friend showed himself as he was. His talking was un

« PreviousContinue »