Chapter IX

Alphonse Rabbe--Madame Cardinal--Rabbe and the Marseilles
Academy--_Les Massénaires_--Rabbe in Spain--His return--The
_Old Dagger_--The Journal _Le Phocéen_--Rabbe in prison--The
writer of fables--_Ma pipe_

Alphonse Rabbe was born at Riez, in the Basses-Alpes. As is the case with all deep and tender-hearted people, he was greatly attached to his own country; he talked of it on every opportunity, and, to believe him, its ancient Roman remains were as remarkable as those of Arles or Nîmes. Rabbe was one of the most extraordinary men of our time; and, had he lived, he would, assuredly, have become one of the most remarkable. Alas! who remembers anything about him now, except Méry, Hugo and myself? As a matter of fact, poor Rabbe gave so many fragments of his life to others that he had not time, during his thirty-nine years, to write one of those books which survive their authors; he whose words, had they been taken down in shorthand, would have made a complete library; he who brought into the literary and political world, Thiers, Mignet, Armaud Carrel, Méry and many others, who are unaware of it, has disappeared from this double world, without leaving any trace beyond two volumes of fragments, which were published by subscription after his death, with an admirable preface in verse by Victor Hugo. Furthermore, in order to quote some portions of these fragments that I had heard read by poor Rabbe himself, compared with whom I was quite an unknown boy (I had only written _Henri III._ when he died), I wanted to procure those two volumes: I might as well have set to work to find Solomon's ring! But I found them at last, where one finds everything, in the rue des Cannettes, in Madame Cardinal's second-hand bookshop. The two volumes had lain there since 1835; they were on her shelves, in her catalogue, had been on show in the window! but they were not even cut! and I was the first to insert an ivory paper-knife between their virgin pages, after eighteen years waiting! Unfortunate Rabbe; this was the last touch to your customary ill-luck! Fate seemed ever against him; all his life long he was looking for a revolution. He would have been as great as Catiline or Danton at such a crisis. When 1830 dawned, he had been dead for twenty-four hours! When Rabbe was eighteen, he competed for an academic prize. The subject was a eulogy of Puget. A noble speech, full of new ideas, a glowing style of southern eloquence, were quite sufficient reasons to prevent Rabbe being successful, or from even receiving honourable mention; but, in this failure, his friends could discern the elements of Rabbe's future brilliancy, should Fortune's wheel turn in his favour. Alas! fortune was academic in Rabbe's case, and Rabbe had Orestes for his patron.

Gifted with a temperament that was carried away by the passion of the moment, Rabbe took it into his head to become the enemy of Masséna in 1815. Why? No one ever really knew, not even Rabbe! He then published his _Massénaires_, written in a kind of prose iambics, in red-hot zeal. This brochure set him in the ranks of the Royalist party. A fortnight later, he became reconciled with the conqueror of Zurich, and he set out on a mission to Spain. From thence dated all poor Rabbe's misfortunes; it was in Spain that he was attacked by a disease which had the sad defect of not being fatal. What was this scourge, this plague, this contagious disease? He shall tell us in his own words; we will not deprive him of his right to give the particulars himself--

"Alas! O my mother, thou couldst not make me invulnerable
when thou didst bear me, by dipping me in the icy waters of
the Styx! Carried away by a fiery imagination and imperious
desires, I wasted the treasures and incense of my youth upon
the altars of criminal voluptuousness; pleasure, which
should be the parent of and not the destroyer of human
beings, devoured the first springs of my youth. When I look
at myself, I shudder! Is that image really myself? What
hand has seared my face with those hideous signs?... What
has become of that forehead which displayed the candour of
my once pure spirit? of those bleared eyes, which terrify,
which once expressed the desires of a heart that was full
of hope and without a single regret, and whose voluptuous
yet serious thoughts were still free from shameful trammels?
A kindly tolerant smile ever lighted them up when they
fell on one of my fellows; but, now, my bold and sadly
savage looks say to all: 'I have lived and suffered; I
have known your ways and long for death!' What has become
of those almost charming features which once graced my
face with their harmonious lines? That expression of happy
good nature, which once gave pleasure and won me love and
kindly hearts, is now no longer visible! All has perished in
degradation! God and nature are avenged! When, hereafter, I
shall experience an affectionate impulse, the expression of
my features will betray my soul; and when I go near beauty
and innocence, they will fly from me! What inexpressible
tortures! What frightful punishment! Henceforth, I must
find all my virtues in the remorse that consumes my life; I
must purify myself in the unquenchable fires of never-dying
sorrow; and ascend to the dignity of my being by means of
profound and poignant regret for having sullied my soul.
When I shall have earned rest by my sufferings, my youth
will have gone.... But there is another life and, when I
cross its threshold, I shall be re-clothed in the robe of
immortal youth!"

Take notice, reader, that, before that unfortunate journey to Spain, Alphonse Rabbe was never spoken of otherwise than as the _Antinous of Aix._ An incurable melancholy took possession of him from this period.

"I have outlived myself!" he said, shaking his head sadly. Only his beautiful hair remained of his former self. Accursed be the invention of looking-glasses! By thirty, he had already stopped short of two attempts at suicide. But his hands were not steady enough and the dagger missed his heart. We have all seen that dagger to which Rabbe offered a kind of worship, as the last friend to whom he looked for the supreme service. He has immortalised this dagger. Read this and tell me if ever a more virile style sprung from a human pen--

THE OLD DAGGER

"Thou earnest out of the tomb of a warrior, whose fate is
unknown to us; thou wast alone, and without companion of thy
kind, hung on the walls of the wretched haunt of a dealer in
pictures, when thy shape and appearance struck my attention.
I felt the formidable temper of thy blade; I guessed the
fierceness of thy point through the sheath of thick rust
which covered thee completely. I hastened to bargain so as
to have thee in my power; the low-born dealer, who only saw
in thee a worthless bit of iron, will give thee up, almost
for nothing, to my jealous eagerness. I will carry thee
off secretly, pressed against my heart; an extraordinary
emotion, mingled with joy, rage and confidence, shook my
whole being. I feel the same shuddering every time I seize
hold of thee.... Ancient dagger! We will never leave one
another more!

"I have rid thee of that injurious rust, which, even after
that long interval of time, has not altered thy form.
Here, thou art restored to the glories of the light; thou
flashest as thou comest forth from that deep darkness. I
did not imprudently entrust thee to a mercenary workman to
repair the injustice of those years: I myself, for two days,
carefully worked to repolish thee; it is I who preserved
thee from the injurious danger of being at the first moment
confused with worthless old iron, from the disgrace,
perhaps, of going to an obscure forge, to be transformed
into a nail to shoe the mule of an iniquitous Jesuit.

"What is the reason that thy aspect quickens the flow of
my blood, in spite of myself?... Shall I not succeed in
understanding thy story? To what century dost thou belong?
What is the name of the warrior whom thou followedst to his
last resting-place? What is the terrible blow which bent
thee slightly?...

"I have left thee that mark of thy good services: to efface
that imperceptible curve which made thy edge uneven, thou
wouldst have had to be submitted to the action of fire; but
who knows but that thou mightst have lost thy virtue? Who,
then, would have given me back the secret of that blade,
strong and obedient to that which the breastplate did not
always withstand, when the blow was dealt with a valiant arm?

"Was it in the blood of a newly killed bull that thy point
was buried on first coming out of the fire? Was it in the
cold air of a narrow gorge of mountains? Was it in the syrup
prepared from certain herbs or, perhaps, in holy oil? None
of our best craftsmen, not Bromstein himself, could tell.

"Tell me whom thou hast comforted and whom punished? Hast
thou avenged the outlaw for the judicial murder of his
father? Hast thou, during the night, engraved on some
granite columns the sentence of those who passed sentence?
Thou canst only have obeyed powerful and just passions;
the intrepid man who wanted to carry thee away with him to
his last resting-place had baptized thee in the blood of a
feudal oppressor.

"Thou art pure steel; thy shape is bold, but without studied
grace; thou wast not, indeed, frivolously wrought to adorn
the girdle of a foppish carpet-knight of the court of
Francis I., or of Charles-Quint; thou art not of sufficient
beauty to have been thus commonplace; the filigree-work
which ornaments thy hilt is only of red copper, that
brilliant shade of red which colours the summit of the Mont
de la Victoire on long May evenings.

"What does this broad furrow mean which, a quarter of the
length down thy blade to the hilt, is pierced with a score
of tiny holes like so many loop-holes? Doubtless they were
made so that the blood could drip through, which shoots and
gushes along the blade in smoking bubbles when the blow has
gone home. Oh! if I shed some evil blood I too should wish
it to drain off and not to soil my hands.... If it were the
blood of a powerful enemy to one's country, little would
it matter if it was left all blood smeared; I should have
settled my accounts with this wretched world beforehand,
and then thou wouldst not fail me at need; thou wouldst do
me the same service as thou renderest formerly to him whose
bones the tomb received along with thee.

"In storms of public misfortunes, or in crises of personal
adversity, the tomb is often the only refuge for noble
hearts; it, at any rate, is impregnable and quiet: there one
can brave accusers and the instruments of despotism, who are
as vile as the accusers themselves!

"Open the gates of eternity to me, I implore thee! Since
it needs must be, we will go together, my old dagger, thou
and I, as with a new friend. Do not fail me when my soul
shall ask transit of thee; afford to my hand that virile
self-reliance which a strong man has in himself; snatch me
from the outrages of petty persecutors and from the slow
torture of the unknown!"

Although this dagger was treasured by the unhappy Rabbe, as we have mentioned, it was not by its means that the _accursed one_, as he called himself, was to put an end to his miseries. Rabbe was only thirty and had strength enough in him yet to go on living.

So, in despair, he dragged out his posthumous existence and flung himself into the political arena, as a gladiator takes comfort to himself by showing himself off between two tigers.

1821 began; the death of the Duc de Berry served as an excuse for many reactionary laws; Alphonse Rabbe now found his golden hour; he came to Marseilles and started _Le Phocéen_, in a countryside that was a very volcano of Royalism. Would you hear how he addresses those in power? Then listen. Hear how he addressed men of influence--

"Oligarchies are fighting for the rays of liberty across the
dead body of an unfortunate prince.... O Liberty! mark with
thy powerful inspirations those hours of the night which
William Tell and his friends used to spend in striking blows
to redress wrongs!..."

When liberty is invoked in such terms she rarely answers to the call. One morning, someone knocked at Rabbe's door; he went to open it, and two policemen stood there who asked him to accompany them to the prison. When Rabbe was arrested, all Marseilles rose up in a violent Royalist explosion against him. An author who had written a couple of volumes of fables took upon himself to support the Bourbon cause in one of the papers. Rabbe read the article and replied--

"Monsieur, in one of your apologues you compare yourself to a sheep; well and good. Then, _monsieur le mouton_, go on, cropping your tender grass and stop biting other things!"

The writer of fables paid a polite call upon Rabbe; they shook hands and all was forgotten.

However, the _Phocéen_ had been suspended the very day its chief editor was arrested. Rabbe was set free after a narrow escape of being assassinated by those terrible Marseillais Royalists who, during the early years of the Restoration, left behind them such wide traces of bloodshed. He went to Paris, where his two friends, Thiers and Mignet, had already won a high position in the hôtels of Laffite and of Talleyrand. If Rabbe had preserved the features of Apollo and the form of Antinous, he would have won all Parisian society by his charm of manner and his delightful winning mental attainments; but his mirror condemned him to seclusion more than ever. His sole, his only, friend was his pipe; Rabbe smoked incessantly. We have read the magnificent prose ode he addressed to his dagger; let us see how, in another style, he spoke to his pipe, or, rather, of his pipe.

MA PIPE

"Young man, light my pipe; light it and give it to me, so
that I can chase away a little of the weariness of living,
and give myself up to forgetfulness of everything, whilst
this imbecile people, eager after gross emotions, hastens
its steps towards the pompous ceremony of the Sacred-Heart
in opulent and superstitious Marseilles.

"I myself hate the multitude and its stupid excitement; I
hate these fairs either sacred or profane, these festivals
with all their cheating games, at the cost of which an
unlucky people consents readily to forget the ills which
overwhelm it; I hate these signs of servile respect which
the duped crowd lavishes on those who deceive and oppress
it; I hate that worship of error which absolves crime,
afflicts innocence and drives the fanatic to murder by its
inhuman doctrines of exclusiveness!

"Let us forgive the dupes! All those who go to these
festivals are promised pleasure. Unfortunate human beings!
We pursue this alluring phantom along all kinds of roads. To
be elsewhere than one is, to change place and affections,
to leave the supportable for worse, to go after novelty
upon novelty, to obtain one more sensation, to grow old,
burdened with unsatisfied desires, to die finally without
having lived, such is our destiny!

"What do I myself look for at the bottom of thy little
bowl, O my pipe! Like an alchemist, I am searching how to
transmute the woes of the present into fleeting delights;
I inhale thy smoke with hurried draughts in order to carry
happy confusion to my brain, a quick delirium, that is
preferable to cold reflection; I seek for sweet oblivion
from what is, for the dream of what is not, and even for
that which cannot be.

"Thou makest me pay dear for thy easy consolations; the
brain is possibly consumed and weakened by the daily
repetition of these disordered emotions. Thought becomes
idle, and the imagination runs riot from the habit of
depicting such wandering agreeable fictions.

"The pipe is the touch-stone of the nerves, the true
dynamometer of slender tissues. Young people who conceal a
delicate and feminine organisation beneath a man's clothing
do not smoke, for they dread cruel convulsions, and, what
would be still more cruel, the loss of the favours of Venus.
Smoke, on the contrary, unhappy lovers, ardent and restless
spirits tormented with the weight of your thoughts.

"The savants of Germany keep a pipe on their desks; it is
through the waves of tobacco smoke that they search after
truths of the intellectual and the spiritual order. That is
why their works, always a little nebulous, exceed the reach
of our French philosophers, whom fashion, and the salons,
compel to inhale more urbane and gracious perfumes.

"When Karl Sand, the delegate of the Muses of Erlangen, came
to Kotzebue's house, the old man, before joining him, had
him presented with coffee and a pipe. This token of touching
hospitality did not in the least disarm the dauntless young
man: a tear moistened his eyelid; but he persisted. Why? He
sacrificed himself for liberty!

"The unhappy man works during the day; and, at night, his
bread earned, with arms folded, before his tumble-down
doorway, with the smoke of his pipe he drives away the few
remaining thoughts that the repose of his limbs may leave
him.

"O my pipe! what good things I owe to thee! If an
importunate person, a foolish talker, a despicable fanatic,
comes and addresses me, I quickly draw a cigar from my case
and begin to smoke, and, henceforth, if I am condemned to
the affliction of listening, I at least escape the penalty
of replying to him. At intervals, a bitter smile compresses
my lips, and the fool flatters himself that I approve him!
He attributes to the effect of the rash cigar the equivocal
heed I pay to his babble.... He redoubles his loquacity;
but, stifled by his impertinence, I suddenly emit the clouds
of thick smoke which I have collected in my mouth, like the
scorn within my breast.

"I exhale both at once, burning vapour and repressed
indignation. Oh! how nauseating is the idiocy of others to
him who is already out of love with, and wearied of, his
own burdens!... I smother him with smoke! If only I could
asphyxiate the fool with the lava from my tiny volcano!

"But when a friend who is lovable alike in mind and heart
comes to me, the pleasure of the pipe quickens the happiness
of the meeting. After the first talk, which rapidly flows
along, whilst the lighted punch scatters the spirituous
particles which abound in the sparkling flame of the
liqueur, the glasses clink together: Friend, from this day
and for a year hence, let us drain the brotherly cup under
the happiest auspices!

"Then we light two cigars, just alike; incited by my friend
to talk on a thousand different topics, I often let mine go
out, and he gives me a light again from his own.... I am
like an old husband who relights a score of times from the
lips of a young beauty the flame of his passion, as impotent
as many times over. O my friend! when, then, will happier
days shine forth?

"Tell me, my friend, in those parts from whence thou comest,
are men filled with hope and courage? Do they keep constant
and faithful to the worship of our great goddess, Liberty?
... Tell me, if thou knowest, how long we must still chafe
at the humiliating bit which condemns us to silence?...

"How it hinders me from flinging down my part of servitude!
How it delays me from seeing the vain titles of tyranny,
which oppress us, reduced to powder; from seeing the ashes
of a dishonoured diadem scattered at the breath of patriots
as the ashes of my pipe are scattered by mine! My soul is
weary of waiting, friend; I warn thee, and with horror I
meditate upon the doings of such sad waywardness. See how
this people, roused wholly by the infamous sect of Loyola,
rushes to fling itself before their strange processions!
Young and old, men and women, all hasten to receive their
hypocritical and futile benedictions! The fools! if the
plague passed under a canopy they would run to see it pass
by and kneel before it! Tell me, friend, is such a people
fit for liberty? Is it not rather condemned to grow old
and still be kept in the infantine swaddling clothes of a
two-fold bondage?

"Men are still but children. Nevertheless, the human race
increases and goes on progressing continually, and meanwhile
stretches its bonds till they break. The time draws near
when it will no longer listen to the lame man who calls
upon it to stop, when it will no longer ask its way of
the blind. May the world become enlightened! God desires
it!... And we, my friend, we will smoke whilst we watch
for the coming dawn. Happily, friend, liberty has her
secrets, her resources. This people, which seems to us for
ever brutalised, is, however, educating itself and every
day becomes more enlightened! Friend, we will forgive the
slaves for running after distractions; we will bear with the
immodest mother who prides herself that her daughters will
pass for virgins when they have been blessed. We will not be
surprised that old scoundrels hope to sweat out the seeds
of their crimes, exhausting themselves to carry despicable
images.

"O my pipe! every day do I owe thee that expressive emblem
of humility which religion only places once a year on
the brow of the adoring Christian: Man is but dust and
ashes.... That, in fact, is all which remains at the last
of the tenderest or most magnanimous heart, of hearts
over-intoxicated with joy or pride, or those consumed with
the bitterest pains.

"These small remnants of men, these ashes, the lightest
zephyr scatter into the empty air.... Where, then, is the
dust of Alexander, where the ashes of Gengis? They are
nothing more than vain historic phantoms; those great
subduers of nations, those terrible oppressors of men, what
are they but fine-sounding names, objects of vain enthusiasm
or of useless malediction!

"I, too, shall soon perish; all that makes up my being, my
very name, will disappear like light smoke.... In a few
days' time, perhaps at the very spot where I now write, it
will not even be known that I have ever existed.... Now,
does something imperishable breathe forth and rise up on
high from this perishable body? Does there dwell in man one
spark worthy to light the calumet of the angels upon the
pavements of the heavens?... O my pipe! chase away, banish
this ambitious and baneful desire after the unknown and the
impenetrable!"

We may be mistaken, but it seems to us that one would search in vain for anything more melancholy in _Werther_ or more bitter in _Don Juan_, than the pages we have just read.