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 EDMOND AND JULES 
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 C • •
 
 Edmond and Jules 
 De Goncourt 
 
 WITH LETTERS, AND LEAVES FROM 
 THEIR JOURNALS 
 
 COMPILED AND TRANSLATED BY 
 
 M. A. BELLOC and M. SHEDLOCK 
 
 Mitb Biobt portraits 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOL. I 
 
 LONDON 
 
 WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 
 1895 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
 Printed by Bai.lantyne, Hanson & Co. 
 At the Bdllantyne Press
 
 ^'. I 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 rpmS book proposes to give an account of the life 
 and work of Edniond and Jules de Goncourt, 
 brothers who achieved a rare literary partnership, 
 and who have remained closely associated in the 
 mind and judgment of the public, although the 
 younger of the two has lain in the grave for nearly 
 a quarter of a century. 
 
 The diaries of their joint-impressions, having 
 appeared many years after the death of Jules de 
 Goncourt, have kept his memory green and his image 
 living, and in his elder brother's work his name is 
 perpetually revived. The sensitive, vivacious, poetic 
 genius of Jules de Goncourt survives as a permanent 
 influence upon M. Edmond de Goncourt's work. 
 
 Their novels and works of historical research have 
 been and are the subjects of constant analysis 
 by all the principal French critics. In the past, 
 Sainte-Beuve, Michelet, Victor Hugo, Flaubert, de 
 Maupassant, and among living writers, Alphonse 
 
 485245 
 
 j'REMCH
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 Daudet, Paul Bourget, and Zola, have written with 
 the warmest admiration of their fiction, while the 
 "Diaries" appeal to all readers, by the extreme 
 pathos of the brotherly affection which they reveal, 
 and the penetrating observation of life and litera- 
 ture which they record. 
 
 M. de Goncourt has kindly given every facility 
 for the use of the diaries and letters. We have 
 also to acknowledge the assistance afforded by 
 M. Delzant's admirable critical and chronological 
 work.
 
 / II /('.•) re rjoiuviirl^ 
 
 (rein a /uTlrni/ t'li ( >ii<niii h r // ('■/t/ //</!//.•> /,'/irti 
 
 11
 
 PAGE 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The de Goncourt family — Edmoncl and Jules' grandfather, their 
 uncle, their father and mother — The brothers : birth and 
 youth — Influence of Madame de Courmont on the young 
 men's future life and tastes — Their mother's last illness and 
 death 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The state of Europe in the year 1849 — Edmond and Jules' first 
 travels — A walking tour through Burgundy and Provence — 
 First impressions of Algiers — Eeturn to Paris — Art studies 
 and summer holidays . . . . . . . .25 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Literary debuts — First essays in dramatic writing — Country 
 holidays — The de Goncourts' first book, En 18 * * — The 
 Coup d'Etat — A review by Jules Janin — A weekly news- 
 paper — The brothers enter journalism — They make the 
 acquaintance of Gavarni the caricaturist — A letter from 
 Victor Hugo to Janin 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Paris, a daily literary paper — Edmond and Jules de Goncourt 
 supcenaed to appear before the Courts — Their offence — A 
 literary cause-ce'lebre — The brothers give up their connec- 
 tion with daily journalism — Publication of La Lorette — An 
 
 autumn holiday — Millet and Jacques — Anecdote . • • 53 
 
 vii
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Histoire de la Socide Fran^aise 'pendant la lle'volution — Eeception of 
 the book by the critics — Letter from Jules de Goncoi;rt to 
 Gavarni- Publication of Histoire de la Societe Frangaise 
 fendant le Directoire — Letters to Aurelien Scholl — Gavarni's 
 description of Balzac, the Duchesse d'Abiantes, Madame 
 Rccamier 6? 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The de (Joncourts' Italian journey — Jules' letters from Venice, 
 Parma, Pisa, and Rome— The brothers' return to Paris — A 
 model mistress described — A visit to Montalembert — Autumn 
 at Gisors — The original of Renk Maxiperin — Sophie Arnould 
 — How Thiers spent his evenings as a young man — The 
 gradual loosening of family ties — Theophile Gautier's methods 
 of work, as described by himself 82 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Year 1857— Publication of Portraits Intimes du XVIII""'" Siecle 
 — Letters from Jules to Saint-Victor and Gavarni — Various 
 conversations with Flaubert, Feydean, Gautier, Gavarni^ 
 Hommes de Lettres — Death of Gavai'ni's son Jean — Napoleon 
 the Third's literary labours — Baudelaire — The year 1858 — 
 Passages from the diary — Rachel's house described by Jules 
 — (iuys of the Illustrated London News — Jules Lecomte . 106 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Publication of U Histoire de Marie Antoinette — Michelet's opinion 
 of the book — Gavarniana — Flaubert — Orsini's love of Italy 
 — Description of Aljout — The room in which Napoleon the 
 First planned 18 Biumaire — The de Goncourts' groom . 127 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Gavarniana — The Iteginnings of .SaHr PJdlomene — Flaubert's 
 criticism of Hugo — A letter from George Sand — Letters from 
 Bar-sur-Seine — A tour through Germany — The true story 
 of the fall of Sebastopol 143
 
 CONTENTS ix 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Jules comimres the Paris of the Past with the Paris of the Present — 
 Studies at the Hospital of La Charitc — Henri Miirger's death 
 and funeral — The publication of Sceur Philomene — Flaubert's 
 reading of Salammbu — Letters . . . . . .163 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 An autumn holiday — The de Goncourts' first impressions of 
 Sainte-Beuve — Year 1862 — An evening with Theophile 
 Gautier and his daughters— A visit to George Sand . .183 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 The illness and death of Rose, the de Goncourts' old servant — 
 The prototype of " Germinie Lacerteux " — Letters to Paul de 
 Saint- Victor — An evening with the Gautiers . . . 200 
 
 CHAPER XIII 
 
 A meeting with Sainte-Beuve — Conversation with the author of 
 Volupte — The Magny dinners — Publication of La Femvie au 
 XVIII''"'^ Siecle — Princess Mathilde Bonaparte — Robespierre 
 as poet — 1863 — Jules de Goncourt's love of children — Tur- 
 gueniev — A visit to Montalembert — Madame Sand at 
 Nohant — Flaubert's Norman home — A call on M. and Mme. 
 Michelet 207
 
 PORTRAITS 
 
 Jules de Goncourt ..... Frontispiece 
 
 From a Portrait on Enatnel by Claudius Popelin. 
 
 Jules de Goncourt to face page 112 
 
 Frotn a Drawing by Edmond de Goncourt. 
 
 Edmond de Goncourt „ ,,152 
 
 By Jules de Goncourt, i860. 
 
 Edmond de Goncourt „ ,,210 
 
 Bust by Lenoir, 1890.
 
 EDMOND AND JULES 
 DE GONCOURT 
 
 WITH LETTERS, AND LEAVES FROM THEIR JOURNALS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The cle Goncourt Family — Edmond and Jules' Grandfather, their 
 Uncle, their Father and ]\Iother— The Brothers : Birth and 
 Youth — Inliuence of Madame de Courmont on the young men's 
 future life and tastes — Their Mother's last illness and death. 
 
 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, the two brothers so 
 indissolubly united in their literary fame, although 
 the younger has been dead for four and twenty 
 years, were the sole surviving children of an officer 
 in the service of the First Empire. 
 
 The de Goncourt family became ennobled early 
 in the last century, and Jean Antoine de Goncourt, 
 Jules and Edmond's grandfather, was a well-known 
 country magistrate, and represented Bassigny in 
 the National Assembly both before and after the 
 Revolution. Of him one of the brothers has left 
 a vivid picture: "An old man, from whose tooth- 
 less mouth constantly issued stuttering oaths, in- 
 cessantly sucked an unlighted pipe, which he 
 perpetually tried to light with a live coal caught 
 up with a little pair of silver tongs. His stick 
 
 VOL. I. A
 
 2 EDMOND AND JULES I)E GONCOURT 
 
 was always on the chair beside him, but it had 
 not always lain idle. He had been a sturdy man 
 in his time, and in his castle at Somm^recourt, 
 which even now resounded with the echoes of his 
 loud voice ... he had trained his domestic sur- 
 roundings by the brute force of his stick, and 
 had succeeded, notwithstanding, in inspiring his 
 household with a certain amount of affection. Old 
 Marie Jeanne, the cook, still treasured among the 
 tender and affectionate memories of her youth, the 
 blows distributed quite impartially to one and 
 another offender, blows merely looked upon as a 
 pleasing familiarity between master and servant, 
 and as an additional tie between them. The old 
 gentleman ruled his family also with a rod of 
 iron, and although his son, Marc Pierre, had the 
 reputation of being one of the wildest officers in 
 the Grande Armee, he used to keep his father's 
 letters nine and ten days in his pocket unopened, 
 so great was his fear of the scolding he felt sure 
 they contained." 
 
 Before the llevolution M. Huot de Goncourt had 
 married a certain Mademoiselle Marguerite Rose 
 Diez, a beautiful Creole girl, by whom he had two 
 sons. The elder, Pierre Antoine Victor, born 23rd 
 June 1783, entered the Ecole Polytechnique in 
 1799, became Lieutenant of Artillery in 1802, 
 and went through all Napoleon's campaigns till 
 1 8 10, when he retired with the grade of Captain. 
 In 1 8 14 he once more took up arms for his chief; 
 again retired after the abdication of Napoleon,
 
 THE DE GONCOURT FAMILY 3 
 
 only to return once more in 181 5, in order to 
 fortify the Vosges for the Emperor, who held him 
 in special esteem. He finally married and settled 
 down to an uneventful country life till 1848, when 
 he was elected to the National Assembly, and died 
 at Neufchateau on the nth of July 1857. 
 
 Capitaine de Goncourt does not seem to have 
 played any part in his nephews' lives. They 
 described him on one occasion as having been 
 somewhat deaf but full of brusque cordiality, hail- 
 fellow-well-met with all, a man eminently suited 
 to country life, and to whom Nature had given 
 such a kindly disposition, that he could not cherish 
 evil feelings even towards his enemies, and this 
 kindliness was as much a part of himself as his 
 courage. As an old man his absorbing interest in 
 life was mathematics, and he used to spend all 
 his spare time walking up and down his garden, 
 his eyes gazing into space. On one occasion he 
 strongly urged the marriage between his grand- 
 daughter and a certain suitor, declaring he felt 
 sure she would be happy with him ; but when 
 asked to state his reason, his sole ground for that 
 assurance was given in the following phrase : " He 
 explained the barometer to me most thoroughly." 
 
 The father of the two writers, Marc Pierre de 
 Goncourt, was born at Bourmont on the 28th June 
 1787, and entered the military school of Fontain- 
 bleau at the age of sixteen, soon passing as sub- 
 lieutenant into the 35th regiment of line infantry. 
 In those days the chances of distinction and promo-
 
 4 EDMOXD AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 tion came quickly; young cle Goncourt went through 
 the whole Italian campaign, noted even among 
 so many brave men as being one of the most 
 courageous ; and at the battle of Pordenona, though 
 wounded and surrounded by the enemy, his reply to 
 those who Avished him to give up his sword was to 
 urge on his men to a fresh charge, and he had all 
 but successfully cut his way through the Italian 
 ranks when he was suddenly struck down and left 
 for dead. Fortunately for the future of French 
 literature he was rescued, and soon recovered 
 sufficiently to become aide-de-camp to General 
 Roussel d'Hurbal, with whom he went through the 
 whole Russian campaign, and his right shoulder was 
 broken the day after the battle of Moskova. At this 
 period he was considered one of the most brilliant 
 and fortunate soldiers in the Grande Armee, for 
 though only twenty-six years of age, he was a 
 major and an officer of the Legion of Honour. 
 
 Edmoud and Jules may be said to have owed 
 their existence indirectly to the battle of Waterloo, 
 for their father, till Napoleon's overthrow, was 
 devoted to his profession, and had no intention 
 of marrying. Vmt the fall of the First Empire 
 broke his career. After spending some years 
 in enforced idleness (for his connection with 
 Napoleonic armies made him an exile from Paris, 
 where the Government would not tolerate the pre- 
 sence of one of Bonaparte's ex-officers), it came to 
 pass that on a fine June day of 1821, Marc Pierre 
 de Goncourt married Mademoiselle Annette-C(^cile
 
 EDMOND AND JULES' MOTHER 5 
 
 Guerin. At the time of her marriage she was 
 twenty-three years of age, and her dowry of forty- 
 four thousand francs (^1760) was considered quite 
 a little fortune in those days. A miniature of 
 Madame de Goncourt, taken during the year of her 
 marriage, is among M. Edmond de Goncourt's most 
 precious possessions, and in a short account of his 
 family, the portrait is mentioned in the following 
 passage: — "I am holding the miniature in the 
 hollow of my hand ; and see before me an open 
 face with deep blue eyes, a tiny but well-formed 
 mouth, fair hair in little frizzy curls, three rows 
 of pearls round the neck, a cambric dress with satin 
 stripes, gathered in with a sash, and a bow of 
 ribbon in the hair of the same colour as her 
 eyes. . . ." 
 
 The young couple began their married life at 
 Bourmont, but they soon moved to Morimond 
 in Bassigny, where they spent the few months prior 
 to their eldest child Edmond's birth, which event 
 took place at Nancy on the 26th May 1822, and 
 was shortly followed by their migration to Paris, 
 where they settled down in the street which is 
 now Rue Rossini, and it was there that three other 
 children were born to them, two little girls, neither 
 of whom survived early childhood, and finally Jules, 
 who entered the world wherein he was destined 
 to so bright and brief a career, on December 
 17th, 1830. 
 
 It would not be easy to determine what influence 
 the Napoleonic veteran exercised on his two sons.
 
 6 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 consciously only on the elder, for Jules was still a 
 tiny child when his father died, but the impression 
 made by the stern parental figure on Edmond's 
 imagination will be gathered from his own strik- 
 ing description of M. de Goncourt. 
 
 *' I see once again the pale face and thin nose, 
 the closely trimmed mutton chop whiskers, the 
 bright, vivacious black eyes, which used to be 
 called the de Goncourt orbs ; the hair cut close to 
 the head, for the seven sabre cuts received by the 
 young lieutenant at Pordcnona . . . had left scars 
 under the rebellious growth of hair ; a face on 
 which, in spite of the tired, drawn features, was 
 still depicted that warlike energy peculiar to the 
 military physiognomy, and of which we have yet a 
 rough reminder in a sketch from the brush of the 
 painter Gros. Once again I see his military gait, 
 and I remember how, after reading his papers in 
 the old reading - room which still exists in the 
 Passage de I'Op^ra, he would pace up and down 
 the Boulevard des Italiens, from the Rue Drouot 
 to the Rue Lafitte, in the company of one or 
 two men also decorated with the ribbon of the 
 Legion of Honour. I can still see them blocking 
 up the way every ten steps, stopping in the midst 
 of an enthusiastic discussion ; the ample gestures of 
 their long bodies betraying the quondam ex-cavalry 
 officers. 
 
 " Yet again I recall him in the parlour of the Ville- 
 deuils, daughters of a former Minister of Louis XVL, 
 elderly cousins of my mother. The apartment was
 
 EDxMOND AND JULES' FATHER 7 
 
 cold and vast, with its bare white wood panellings 
 and its scanty furnitnre hidden under covers. On 
 the back of a chair was always hanging the reti- 
 cule of one of the old ladies, the stiff flower-boxes 
 were filled with faded flowers, and on the Dunkerque 
 tables were scattered artistic knick-knacks recalling; 
 the days of Royalty. There my father used to stand 
 in a parlour, which for all the world might have 
 been that of the Duchess of Angouleme, leaning up 
 against the mantelpiece, with his black eyes flash- 
 ing irony. Bored with the solemn ennui of the 
 place, he would suddenly launch some ' bon mot,' 
 over which the old ladies, forgetting for the nonce 
 their dead-leaf snufl-coloured garments, would once 
 more be convulsed with the renewed merriment 
 of youth. 
 
 " Once more I see him, this time at Brevannes, 
 where I spent the summers of my childhood. I 
 remember the sunny July and August mornings, 
 when my little feet strove to keep pace with his 
 long strides, whilst Avith one hand I held on to 
 his, and with the other I grasped a stick torn from 
 the hedge. He used to take me to drink the waters 
 at the Fontaine de I'Amour, which sprang in the 
 midst of meadows starred with Easter daisies, and 
 provided discriminating water-drinkers with a fresh 
 draught thought by my father worthy of comparison 
 with the ' aqua felice ' of Rome. 
 
 " Sometimes the stick was replaced by a gun, and 
 though he had with him neither game-bag nor dog, I 
 often saw him suddenly aim at something my short
 
 8 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 sight had failed to detect, which turned out to be a 
 hare running its last race. 
 
 " Then again I remember him on the days when the 
 fruit was gathered in, framed in the oval window of 
 the loft, pelting the village urchins with apples, 
 which he hurled down into the courtyard, apostro- 
 phising the crowd with grotesque nicknames, whilst 
 those below, scrambling for the missiles, seemed to 
 furnish my father with a miniature reminiscence of 
 the past times of war. 
 
 " Then again — but here my memory fails me — I 
 try to recall my father's face, but can only remember 
 a warm and terribly thin hand, which I was told to 
 kiss, as it was stretched forth from the coverlet. 
 That night, returning to the Pension Goubaix, I 
 dreamt a dream of the nature of a nightmare, in 
 which my aunt de Courmont (the clever woman 
 w^hom I have described under the name of Madame 
 Gervaisais, and who first inspired me with a love for 
 the beautiful) appeared to me, and in so lifelike a 
 form that I had difficulty in believing it was not 
 her real self, and she uttered these words, ' Edmond, 
 your father will not last three days.' That was on 
 Sunday night, and on the following Tuesday I was 
 sent for to attend my father's funeral." 
 
 There were fully eight years between the brothers, 
 Edmond having been born under the reign of the 
 Bourbons, and Jules during that of the citizen 
 king, Louis Philippe. The two boys saw very 
 little of one another for some time, for Edmond 
 was early sent to the Pension Goubaix, a famous
 
 EDMOND DE GONCOURT'S SCHOOL LIFE 9 
 
 school founded and managed by a man who had 
 been in his day a successful playwright. It was 
 there that the elder de Goncourt made the acquaint- 
 ance of Alexandre Dumas fils, from whose pen, by 
 the way, came many years later a remarkable 
 description of the Pension Goubaix, for to it he 
 sends his miserable hero in V Affaire Clemenceait, 
 much as Dickens sent Nicholas Nickleby to Dothe- 
 boys Hall. But Edmond's school life does not seem 
 to have left nearly so strong an impression on him 
 as on the boy destined to be one of his literary 
 rivals, and all that w^e know of his childhood and 
 youth is contained in a very few striking pictures 
 of what he recalls having seen and noticed. 
 
 After some years spent at the Pension Goubaix, 
 Edmond finally entered the Lycee Henri Quatre, 
 and formed part of the class of a certain worthy 
 M. Caboche, who used to set his pupils the task of 
 giving in Latin verse a description of the Duchess 
 of Burgundy, according to Saint Simon's account 
 of Louis the Fourteenth's vivacious granddaughter. 
 M. Caboche and his pupil seemed to have got on 
 excellently together, though on one occasion some- 
 thing said or done by the boy caused the master 
 to utter the curious prophecy : " As for you, M. de 
 Goncourt, you will give rise to scandal ! " 
 
 Madame de Goncourt became a widow in 1834, 
 w^hen Jules was four and Edmond twelve years of 
 age. She seems to have entirely devoted the rest 
 of her Hfe to her two sons, and more especially to 
 Jules, who, being a dehcate nervous child, required
 
 lo EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 most of her care. " Poor mother," says M. de 
 Goncoiirt in the pages ah'eady quoted, " her whole 
 life was one of grief and misfortune. ... I recall her 
 sweet sad face (with the changes of physiognomy 
 which no picture can render) under one or two of 
 those circumstances which leave behind a vivid 
 impression. 
 
 " I remember one occasion when I was quite a 
 child, and very ill after measles and whooping- 
 cough ; I was lying in a large bed, and she was 
 stooping over me ; beside her was the pretty curly 
 head of her brother Armand, a young officer of 
 hussars (for nearly all the men of our two families 
 were soldiers). Suddenly, I could not then divine 
 the reason, she threw the sheet over my little thin, 
 corpse-like body, and falling into her brother's arms, 
 burst into tears. . . . 
 
 " How well I remember my mother, on those 
 Shrove Tuesdays, when she gave an annual fancy 
 dress ball to all the children of the family and to 
 their little friends ; then, a tiny world of shepherd- 
 esses, peasant girls, fishwives, harlequins, sailors, 
 and Turks, filled the quiet flat, and caused an 
 unwonted stir. On these occasions some of the 
 brightness of the childish carnival was reflected on 
 her face, to which it lent a charming radiance. 
 
 " I seem to see her again, my mother, during 
 those years when, retired from the world, and no 
 longer young, she became of an evening the 
 gentle magister of my brother. In the bourgeois 
 bedroom, with its old family furniture and Empire
 
 A SUMMER HOLIDAY n 
 
 clock, I see our mother seated in an arm-chair close 
 to my brother, who during his lesson is raised, by 
 a fat dictionary, to the level of the old mahogany 
 table, on which his elbows rest." 
 
 During the summer months, Madame de Goncourt 
 generally took her children into the country, and 
 Jules has left a delightful description of a visit the 
 two boys paid with their mother to M. and Madame 
 Hippolyte Passy at Gisors. It seems to have been 
 their first experience of simple family life, and 
 to have left a lasting impression on their minds. 
 M. and Madame Passy dwelt in a chateau which 
 had once been a convent, and the quaint old house 
 standing in a large park, "with its shady thickets, 
 and winding streams," seems to have been a very 
 paradise to the young Passys and their friends. 
 Years later Jules de Goncourt wrote in his diary — 
 
 *' I am now at Gisors, and the image of my child- 
 hood rises before me free of all gloom and terror. 
 
 "The beautiful little memories, which had faded 
 from my head and heart, have come to life and put 
 forth unexpectedly new blossoms, as a plant which 
 has appeared dead suddenly comes to life : every 
 corner of the house and gardens contains (for me) 
 a recollection and a lost treasure : it is as if I stood 
 beside the grave of pleasures which can never be 
 lived over again. We were all children together 
 then, and did not wish to be anything but children ; 
 life seemed one vast holiday, crowded with pastimes 
 which left no bitter taste, and with joys which had 
 a to-morrow. How often we rushed down the rose-
 
 12 EDMOXD AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 bordered iliglit of steps leading to the lawn. I 
 remember our game of prisoner's base : one camp 
 was under the old apple-tree, the other by the huge 
 clump of lilac. What a foolish but joyous rivalry 
 was ours ! What fire we put into it all ! I can 
 remember hesitating for the space of quite three 
 seconds as to whether I should not throw myself 
 into the river to avoid being caught by my adver- 
 sary. Ah ! what a children's paradise was the house, 
 and the garden was no less enchanting ! The old 
 convent, now changed into a bourgeois chateau, 
 seemed to have been planned specially with a view 
 to children's games. . . . 
 
 "But the little ferry-boat, in which we used to 
 cross and recross the river, has ceased to exist. 
 
 "AVhat changes and ravages have been brought 
 about alrcadv ! The small brids:©, so dano-erous to 
 the rower, against which bumped many a boat in 
 our time, now sleeps peacefully under the river. 
 The little narrow strip of water, which used to run 
 round the island where the tall poplars stood, has 
 grown into quite a wide stream. Alas ! the old 
 apple-tree (which yielded us, however, but sorry 
 fruit) is also dead." 
 
 It was during this first visit to Gisors that Jules 
 de Goncourt made the acquaintance of Louis Passy, 
 a lad destined in after years to be his most intimate 
 friend, and the recipient of his most characteristic 
 letters ; there were also the two little daughters 
 of the house, a source of deep interest to both 
 the boy visitors ; indeed their first love affairs
 
 A SUMMER HOLIDAY 13 
 
 may be said to date from their visit to Gisors, for 
 pretty Jenny became so enthusiastically attached 
 to Edmond that she kept a collection of his peach- 
 stones in a box. The whole of the little party em- 
 ployed themselves in amateur theatricals ; Madame 
 Passy provided the costumes, and even allowed 
 them to use a pot of rouge which had once be- 
 longed to Madame Martin (of Vernis-Martin fame), 
 and Avhich had actually cost a hundred francs. 
 " Numerous indeed were the incidents, and keen 
 was the stimulant to our vanity, provided by the 
 rehearsals which Pere Pourrat took in hand, bidding 
 us ever follow the dramatic maxim of Talma ; and 
 ah ! the delightful childish element that prevailed ! 
 for instance, the anger of Blanche when she dis- 
 covered that the tenor had devoured the pear which 
 she was supposed to eat on the stage. Could one 
 ever forget, either, the joyful little suppers, con- 
 sisting as a rule of two dozen apple puffs, served 
 out to the dramatic troupe ? 
 
 "Then at last came the great day preceding that 
 of the performance, when Madame Passy laid out 
 all the costumes in the room in which we are 
 sleeping to-day." 
 
 M. Louis Passy preserved all the letters written 
 to him by Jules, including a boyish epistle, which 
 bears the date August 23rd, 1844. 
 
 " Dear Louis, — I ought to have written to you 
 yesterday, but it was impossible. I hope you will 
 forgive me. I have now been two days at Nancy,
 
 14 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 a charming town, ornamented with magnificent 
 squares and promenades ; one of those to which we 
 resort every evening, reminds me of the Tuileries. 
 Although it is holiday time, I am not enjoying myself 
 as much this year as on former occasions ; perhaps 
 I was spoiled by having you as a companion, and 
 by all the kindness your mother showed me. Are 
 you enjoying yourself at Etuf? Are you and 
 Blanche chasing many butterflies, and catching 
 many fishes ? Do you take long w-alks wath your 
 father, and do you go hunting with him ? Please 
 w'rite all details ; they interest me greatly. My 
 letter will arrive on your birthday, and I seize 
 this festive opportunity for telling you of the strong 
 affection I feel for you. The day I came aw-ay I 
 met M. Pourrat (Louis Passy's tutor) with his two 
 children. Antonin looks a good sort of fellow. 
 Write to me as soon as you can ; your letter wall 
 give me the greatest pleasure. 
 
 *' To-morrow I start for Neufchateau. Good-bye, 
 dear Louis. My mother joins with me in love to 
 you and Blanche, and begs to be remembered 
 kindly to your mother and to all your family. 
 My brother claims a share of this remembrance. — 
 Your affectionate friend, Jules." 
 
 When it became too warm to stay in Paris, and 
 no invitation came from provincial friends or rela- 
 tions, Madame de Goncourt spent the summer 
 holidays with one of her sisters-in-law, Madame 
 de Courmont, a lady destined to exercise a great
 
 THE ORIGINAL OF "MADAME GERVAISAIS" 15 
 
 influence on her nephews' youth, and a woman 
 of rare and remarkable intelligence. During the 
 winter she inhabited a charming apartment at the 
 corner of the Place Vendome, and every Sunday 
 Edmond's greatest pleasure, when a schoolboy, 
 was to go and sit at the feet of the aunt of 
 whom he afterward drew so curious a picture in 
 the novel, Madame Gervaisais. "Xante Nathalie" 
 entertained many members of the artistic and lite- 
 rary world, in unostentatious French fashion, and it 
 was in her drawing-room that Edmond first met 
 Eachel, when the latter was but a timid debutante, 
 though beginning to be famous. M. de Goncourt 
 has written a fine description of Madame de Cour- 
 mont sitting reading close to the window looking 
 out on the great square ; forming a bright background 
 to the slight stately figure, was the beautiful Greuze 
 portrait of her mother, one of the finest works of the 
 eighteenth-century master, and painted at a period 
 when his sitter had been married but a few months. 
 It was to Madame de Courmont that the elder at 
 least of the two brothers owed his intense love of 
 literature, for she read and discussed freely all that 
 was published, and this in so natural a fashion that 
 no one ever affected to think her a blue-stocking. 
 
 In those days there were perhaps but four or 
 five collectors, in the modern sense of the word, 
 in Paris ; Madame de Courmont could claim to be 
 one of them, for she possessed a true artistic sense, 
 and a passionate delight in the rare old tapestries, 
 sculptured ivories, old lace, precious china, and
 
 i6 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 the thousand and one hiblots and curiosities, then 
 thought of little account, but now worth their 
 weight in gold. 
 
 Every May, Madame de Courmont and her 
 sister-in-law migrated to an old villa in Menil 
 Montant, a gift from the Regent to Mademoiselle 
 Marquise, and both Edmond and Jules seem to 
 have greatly enjoyed this yearly plunge into an old- 
 world atmosphere. 
 
 In addition to the park, boasting of two tiny 
 temples dedicated to the God of Love, and a de- 
 lightful kitchen garden jealously guarded by the 
 old gardener, there was a tiny theatre, which, 
 though in ruins, proved the joy of the two lads, 
 and perhaps first gave them the love for things 
 dramatic, which became later one of their most 
 marked characteristics. 
 
 During the holidays it was also Edmond's pride 
 and pleasure to accompany his mother and two 
 aunts on curiosity-hunting expeditions. The three 
 ladies, dressed in the clear muslin of those days, 
 shod with delicate little prunella shoes with silk 
 sandals crossed and tied round the ankles, would 
 walk daintily down the hill into the Faubourg Saint 
 Antoine, where the curiosity shops of the Paris of 
 1835 were then to be found, and after having 
 picked up some excellent bargain, they would make 
 their way slowly once more to the heights of Menil 
 Montant, Edmond proudly carrying his aunt's newly 
 acquired treasure till he was able to lay the precious 
 burden down on one of the spindle-legged Louis
 
 A STRANGE MEMBER OF THE FAMILY 17 
 
 XY. tables, which were so much in keeping with 
 the panelled boudoirs of a house which had once 
 belonged to the Regent's cliere amie. 
 
 The de Goncourt family had always boasted of 
 many strange types. One cousin spent his whole 
 time in inventing a three-wheeled vehicle, which, 
 when perfected, would be self-propelling ; of another, 
 a certain Marquis, the son of a former Minister, M. 
 de Goncourt gives a vivid picture. 
 
 "When I knew him he was a fine old man with 
 silvery hair — radiant in the snowiest of linen — with 
 the fine gallant manners of a gentleman of the old 
 school ; of benevolent though somewhat haughty 
 bearing — with the countenance of a Bourbon, the 
 grace of a Choiseul, and a smile which to the fair 
 sex was a sign of everlasting youth. This charm- 
 ing relic of court splendour had only one fault ; he 
 never lingered in the realms of abstract thought ; 
 I never heard him attack a single subject which 
 was not as purely material as the time of day, or 
 a special dish. In the way of literature he had the 
 Charivari and the Mode sent him regularly, and 
 always ordered them to be bound. He extended a 
 pardon to the Government in office when it caused 
 a rise in his income. He would shut himself up 
 with his cook to go through the accounts, dignifying 
 this occupation with the title of work. He had a 
 prie Dieu in his room covered with velvet; and 
 in his drawing-room furniture of the Restoration 
 period, arm-chairs covered with the tapestries done 
 in cross stitch, over which seemed to linger the 
 
 VOL. I. ^
 
 iS EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 shadow of the Duchess of Augouleme's great 
 Leghorn hat. He had an ancient livery, an ancient 
 carriage, and an ancient negro whom he had 
 imported from the colonies, where he had once 
 led a joyous existence. This relation of mine 
 was still under tlie influence of the most extra- 
 ordinary prejudices; for -instance, he believed that 
 the people who make you look at the moon 
 put things in the telescopes injurious to the eye- 
 sight ! 
 
 " He attended mass, fasted and celebrated Easter 
 in the most exemplary manner ; it was only towards 
 the end of Lent that fasting exasperated him : then 
 he took to scolding the servants. There was in this 
 man a remnant of some great principle fallen into 
 second childhood. He was generous, venerable, and 
 sympathetic, had a good heart, and was of noble 
 race." 
 
 And so the de Goncourts' youth passed away, 
 Jules justifying his mother's system of home educa- 
 tion by his successes at the College Bourbon, where 
 he won, though only a day scholar, Greek and Latin 
 prizes, and a history Accessit. In his spare time 
 he composed a drama in verse, Etienne Marcel, 
 a title indicating clearly what w^re then the young 
 poet's political sympathies. About the same time 
 he read, during class, Notre Dame de Paris, and 
 illustrated the margin of each page with pen and 
 ink drawings. 
 
 Edmond, with the simple nobility of nature which 
 later always made him take the second place in all
 
 JULES ON THE INSURRECTION OF 1848 19 
 
 that concerned his own and his brother's joint Hfe 
 and fame, consented to accept a post in the Ministry 
 of Finance, aUhongh all his instinct and aptitude 
 were literary and artistic, in order to please and 
 satisfy his mother, who longed to see her eldest 
 son definitely settled, as she thought, in a good 
 Government office. 
 
 Jules, then eighteen years of age, seems to have 
 had his vivid imagination pow^erfully affected by 
 the insurrection which took place in the June 
 of 1848. He wrote on the 3rd of July to Louis 
 Passy : — 
 
 " We ran a great danger, my dear Louis. Some of 
 the papers would like to travesty the terrible event 
 which has just occurred into being a slight riot. 
 This is untrue. It was an insurrection, and an 
 insurrection which was very nearly becoming a 
 revolution. Had Paris been placed in a state of 
 siege two hours earlier, had the Hotel de Ville 
 been taken, and had Cavaignac been killed, all 
 was lost. On the Saturday evening the Generals, 
 gathered together in council at the Ministry of 
 Finance, refused to answer for the situation. . . . 
 There can be no mistake, dear Louis, this is the 
 first skirmish in the social war, the war of the 
 needy against the rich, of him who possesses nothing 
 against him who possesses all, the first page in 
 the books of Socialism and of Communism. . . . 
 
 "Edmond only found himself in the brawl on 
 Monday night, and cannot claim the glory of having 
 fired a single bullet. On Friday his Company was
 
 20 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 fighting, but he Avas tied to his office. The only 
 person wounded among our friends is M. Michel. 
 ... As you may imagine, M. Nisard is almost crazy 
 with terror ; his sighs would split mountains : poor 
 classical Jeremiah ! . . . People do nothing but 
 read the papers ; all business is laid aside." 
 
 A fortnight later — 
 
 " I repeat, the June insurrection was the preface 
 to social war. You answer me that this struggle 
 has existed since the beginning of the world; I 
 agree ; but this hatred for the wealthy, for the 
 superior, was until the present time disguised 
 under more or less specious pretexts, such as the 
 defence of a principle, of a king, or of a pretender. 
 At the present time we see the hatred in all 
 its monstrous nudity. Until lately the people 
 used to say, ' This Prince does not treat us fairly, 
 let us put another in his place, and all will go 
 well.' Now they say, ' Let us govern ourselves, 
 let us make our own laws,' and this is more 
 logical." 
 
 The possible danger incurred by her sons either 
 shattered Madame de Goncourt's already weak 
 health, or she had long been more seriously ailing 
 than the two young men had been told ; but be that 
 as it may, Edmond and Jules soon became aware 
 that all was not as it should be. Much alarmed, 
 they moved her to the Chateau de Magny, a fine old 
 house in Seme-et-Marne, then belonging to their 
 cousins the de Villedeuils. There she lingered 
 quietly on, her condition filling those around her
 
 DEATH OF MADAME DE GONCOURT 21 
 
 with alternate hopes and fears. Jnles seems to 
 have first realised the gravity of his mother's state 
 in the following letter to M. Passy : — 
 
 "Chateau bk Magny, 
 Tuesday, September 4, 1848. 
 
 "My dear Louis, — My poor mother is dying. 
 As I told you in my last letter, she was getting 
 better, but a fortnight ago she became feverish, and 
 had to return to bed. Since then, dear friend, she 
 has got steadily worse, and now her state leaves 
 no hope. Fortunately Edmond has been here some 
 days. Together we shall have more strength to 
 bear the terrible blow which awaits us. Alas, 
 my dear Louis, may it never be your lot to be 
 crushed under the weight of a like sorrow. I have 
 not the strength to write any more. Think of 
 me in sympathy. — Your affectionate friend, 
 
 Jules." 
 
 The next mornins; Madame de Goncourt received 
 Extreme Unction, commended Jules to his elder 
 brother, a trust most worthily fulfilled, and died as 
 quietly as she had lived, leaving in both her sons' 
 hearts an imperishable memory, and we may add 
 a lasting influence. 
 
 On September 24th, after their sad return to Paris, 
 Jules wrote to his friend : — 
 
 "My very dear Friend,— I only returned from 
 Magny yesterday, and found your two kind letters
 
 22 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 on my arrival. I can understand your anxiety on 
 receiving no news from me. Do not fear, I have 
 still the moral strength and energy to write a few 
 lines to a friend. 
 
 " Accept my warm thanks for your remembrance 
 of me, dear Louis, and for your friendship of many 
 years. Though there is no consolation for the loss 
 I have just undergone, it is nevertheless a relief to 
 find sympathy and mourning among all who knew 
 my mother. All my friends (and you, more than 
 any, dear Louis), have proved that they deserved 
 that title, and that they felt, not merely the 
 ' banale ' sympathy inspired by happy days in 
 common, but the solid affection so much needed in 
 times of trouble. 
 
 " Your mother behaved as I expected on this 
 occasion ; but I had no need of any such assur- 
 ance, for I know the affection she cherished for 
 us both before this terrible trouble came upon 
 us. She will be of the number of my mother's 
 friends who will ever be dear to us ; these friend- 
 ships are part of a legacy to which we shall 
 always hold fast. ' , . . On Tuesday, she was so 
 ill that the last Sacraments were administered. 
 When this heart-breaking ceremony was ended, 
 my mother said to us ' Is it all over ? ' She did 
 not see grim death approaching, she did not 
 know she was about to die ; a mother always 
 clings to life. 
 
 "Then she communicated her last wishes to 
 Edmond, and joined our hands together. The
 
 TWO LETTERS FROM JULES 23 
 
 death agony began at a quarter-past four : an hour 
 later we were orphans. 
 
 " I know, dear Louis, that it means happiness to 
 her. She suffered so much that death was a relief. 
 But for us, and especially for me, is it not the loss 
 of the very centre of all our affections, the object 
 of all our love "? Ah ! poor mother ! What can I 
 say of my plans for the future ? What is to be 
 my career? To what profession can one destine 
 oneself at this moment of social chaos when all 
 humanity seems to have ' turned giddy, swaying 
 to and fro like a drunken man,' as says Bossuet. 
 Our only settled plan is to go to Italy for a year 
 or two, unless fighting should take place there 
 also within the next six weeks. ..." 
 
 But before giving any serious thought to this 
 longed-for Italian tour, Jules made up his mind to 
 pass his examinations, and in November he writes 
 to Louis Passy from Bar-sur-Seine : — 
 
 "As for me, dear Louis, I am trotting along at 
 my usual leisurely pace. I have just finished get- 
 ting through Roman history. The following is the 
 sum total of my knowledge : I know^ philosophy, 
 ancient and modern history. Before I leave, I will 
 learn all about the Middle Ages and modern history. 
 I will look up my geography and literature, and I 
 shall have nothing left for the days between the 
 loth and the 30th of December but mathematics, 
 physics, chemistry, and natural history. That's 
 what I call order and progress. ... As for poHtics,
 
 24 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 1 must tell you at once briefly that I am more of 
 a pessimist than ever." 
 
 By the end of the year both Jules and Louis 
 Passy liad passed with signal success the govern- 
 ment examination, and obtained the privilege of 
 writing '' Bachclier" after their names.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Tlie state of Europe in the year 1 849 — Edmond and Jules' first travels — 
 A walking tour tlirough Burgundy and Provence — First impres- 
 sions of Algiers — Return to Paris — Art studies and summer 
 holidays. 
 
 In the spring of 1849 Europe was still agitated by 
 the ground swell from the convulsions of the previous 
 year. The French monarchy, seemingly secure in its 
 mixture of common sense and good intention, had 
 broken up with the suddenness of a sheet of ice. 
 By the death of his sister Madame Adelaide, the 
 king had lost his best friend and political adviser. 
 With this kindly, vigorous old woman of seventy, it 
 seemed as if the good genius of the Orleans family 
 had perished. Within three months Louis Philippe 
 was an exile in England, his narrow electoral system 
 swept away, and France given over to an inde- 
 scribable mixture of theorists. Lamartine fell into 
 office, and made eloquent speeches at the Hotel de 
 Ville ; he had written the famous "History of the 
 Girondins," was very intelligent and singularly hand- 
 some ; it seems on looking back that he had no other 
 special aptitude for the position. In fine, came the 
 violent insurrections of the workmen, put down by 
 General de Cavaignac ; then the race for the Pre- 
 sidency, in which Louis Napoleon won. But in the
 
 26 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 meantime Europe had caught fire, and thrones came 
 toppling down with extraordinary rapidity. Italy 
 was as much shaken as France ; the Pope had left 
 Rome, Mazzini and Garihaldi kept the city, Gioberti 
 agitated Piedmont, and Montanelli Tuscany. In 
 upper Italy the French Ilevolution became the signal 
 for a popular rising against the Austrian rule, and 
 Radetsky, the commander of the Austrian army, was 
 compelled to relinquish Lombardy and fall back on 
 Verona. The Italian disturbances, varying in result 
 and prolific of bloodshed, discouraged the two young 
 men from crossing the Alps ; and after waiting the 
 whole winter, in the hope that European politics 
 would calm down, Jules, in a letter written on the 
 23rd of May 1849 to Louis Passy, told him of the 
 change, or rather modification, in their plans. 
 
 " Decidedly, my friend, I persist in my opinion 
 in regard to our epoch, namely, that it is terribly 
 disagreeable to very many people, and particularly 
 to that respectable class called tourists. All Europe 
 is full of troubles, of insurrections, of the firing of 
 guns. The Italian question is desperately compli- 
 cated all things considered, as the Constitutionnel 
 would say, ' clouds are covering the political hori- 
 zon.' So that we two are furious, and cannot re- 
 concile ourselves to being compelled by prudence to 
 renounce our Italian tour, and this, after having taken 
 all necessary steps, made every preparation, and in 
 fact almost packed our trunks preparatory to paying 
 our respects to the classic land of artists and of 
 macaroni. In revenge we have decided to make
 
 LETTERS FROM JULES 27 
 
 a long journey in the South of France, since the 
 country of the rogue and of the riot, and the birth- 
 place of impromptu revolutions, is the one where 
 still exists the most public order. Thus, my dear 
 friend, you see that our separation will not be as 
 long as I expected, and this gives me some con- 
 solation. Our tour will not be prolonged beyond 
 November. We shall winter in Paris, and have 
 plenty of leisure for seeing one another." 
 
 " Bar-sur-Seine, I ith June 1849. 
 
 " If only in reading those three words, ' Bar-sur- 
 Seine,' you must feel reassured about me, for they 
 signify that I am far from Paris. You see I have 
 followed your advice, and here I am, not a few 
 kilometres from the home of the plague. The four 
 or five days which preceded my departure Paris 
 had the cholic, Paris was dying, Paris was afraid. 
 Panic was the order of the day ; every other thought, 
 every other subject of conversation was basketted. 
 The mute was in his glory, the bier was enthroned 
 in the wealthy quarters, whilst in poorer districts 
 the coflfins were carried. The capital smiled only 
 a muscular smile, for her soul was draped with 
 black. In short, the cholera, my dear Louis, 
 has left us a visiting card almost as large as that 
 of 1832. 
 
 "Whatever happens, I am going to take dur- 
 ing my pedestrian trip through France, knapsack 
 on back, and stick in hand — I am going to take, 
 say I, only one volume, ' Victor Hugo.' This is
 
 28 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 one of the greatest homages ever rendered to the 
 great man. I feel sure he would be much flattered 
 if he heard of it ; unfortunately the greatest acts of 
 devotion are only rewarded by anonymity." 
 
 " Bar-sur-Seine, 26th June 1849. 
 
 " My dear Friend, — I think that the cholera 
 must have saved us from an insurrection on the 
 13th of June. All thoughts were turned towards 
 the great Destroyer, so we escaped that other great 
 plague called Civil War. I have just read Byron : 
 have you? He is an absolutely French poet. His 
 poem of ' Don Juan ' seems to have been written 
 by a Musset, but a gin-drinking Musset. It is an 
 incomplete work, full of witty touches, which would 
 seem rather to belon"- to a vaudeville than to a 
 comedy." 
 
 In his early letters to Louis Passy, Jules constantly 
 interposed verses, sometimes grave, sometimes gay, 
 but he soon gave up poetry, and never cared to 
 have these early rhymes alluded to. 
 
 " Bar-sur-Skixe, gth July 1849. 
 
 " You are at Vichy, my dear friend, living, you 
 tell me, in the house of the somewhat famous 
 Marquise de Sevigne. I congratulate you. Those 
 places peopled with memories make agreeable rest- 
 ing places. They put a little poetry into our 
 bourgeois century ; something retrospectively pictur- 
 esque, in the midst of all our modern trivialities. . . .
 
 A PEDESTRIAN TOUR 29 
 
 Poetry of the past, when will you return ? Yes- 
 terday I was in a chateau belonging to my cousin. 
 It was once the manor - house of the Abbes of 
 Molesmes. Imagine five towers, gigantic chimneys, 
 charming corkscrew staircases, shields embossed with 
 coats-of-arms, everything there recalls the period 
 guillotined by '89. . . . 
 
 " As for me, I spend all my days on or in the 
 water, either boating or swimming. I consider a 
 river lined with trees the prettiest sight that can 
 be seen. In three or four days we start from here 
 on our pedestrian tour. Write to me to Dijon, 
 Poste Restante. . . ." 
 
 After their mother's death Edmond and Jules 
 found themselves possessed of a modest fortune, 
 and it is not to be wondered at, that their first 
 thought was to begin their joint life by seeing 
 something of the great world of which they had 
 heard so much and seen so little. The two young 
 men set off from Bar-sur-Seine in the early days of 
 July, clad in white blouses and carrying knapsacks 
 on their backs. Jules was so slight, so rosy, and 
 smooth-cheeked, that the shrewd peasantry of Bur- 
 gundy and Provence credited Edmond with having 
 eloped with his sweetheart, travestied for the nonce 
 into a boy companion. 
 
 Although they thoroughly enjoyed the experience 
 from an artistic point of view, if we except Jules' 
 frequent letters to Louis Passy, none of the sights 
 they saw seem to have inspired either of the
 
 30 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 brothers with a wish to put their impressions on 
 paper. On the contrary, when resting in some 
 little wayside inn after the long day's walk 
 through the beautiful country they w^ere traversing, 
 Jules' chief thought was to record in his pocket 
 diary the number of kilometres just accomplished, 
 and to note the names of the towns through which 
 they had passed. Here and there, however, w^e 
 come across a slight description full of feeling for 
 the picturesque. 
 
 " Tliursday, i^th September — Sixty-first day 
 — From Paray-le-Monial to the Chateau 
 of Digoine (15 kilometres). 
 
 " Chateau, period Louis XIV. — of royal dimen- 
 sions. M. de Chabriant shows us round a very 
 fine park surrounding a splendid lake. A con- 
 servatory conceived in the aerial spirit of a winter 
 garden, rich with an indigenous and exotic flora. 
 A theatre decorated by Ciceri, white and gold, 
 family shields of those allied to the Chabriants, 
 a small copy of the theatre at Versailles, the very 
 frame for one of Musset's proverbs, and Clodions, 
 (the bath-room of Besenval), for which Lord Here- 
 ford once offered 65,000 francs, . . . 
 
 ' • Friday, 2\st Sept em her — Sixty-ni7i th day — 
 From Bourg to Macon (34 kilometres). 
 
 " We drew in the Parish Church from eight 
 o'clock to twelve, took coffee close by, drew in the 
 church of Brou from half-past one to half-past
 
 JULES' LITERARY CONVICTIONS 31 
 
 five, and then started for Macon at six o'clock, at 
 racing pace. Dined on the road on two small cakes. 
 Eight leagues and a half (34 kilometres) m Jive 
 hours and five minutes. Carriages go over the 
 same ground in four hours and a half — supped on 
 a trout and a red pheasant." 
 
 The 29th of the same month finds them at Vienne, 
 from which place Jules writes a long letter to Louis 
 Passy, in which are summed up his then literary 
 ideas, and where we once more observe that touch of 
 the artistic temperament which made him unwilling 
 to settle down to a quiet bourgeois existence. 
 
 " My literary convictions must indeed be part of 
 myself — and repose on solid foundations — as you 
 failed in converting me to Boileau, but what would 
 you have ? After having perused your sermon I read 
 a few verses of Hugo. To you poetry consists in 
 a continual periphrasis of words. , . . How about 
 ideas ? You reduce the poet, essentially a creator 
 and thinker, to being only a worker in mosaic, or 
 a composer of rhymes. Yes, I love Victor Hugo ! 
 I care for him because he wrote Notre Dame de 
 Paris: because he wrote Marion Delorme, Les 
 Burgraves, Le Roi s' Amuse — because, whatever you 
 may say, his plays are original, not only owing to 
 touches thrown in by chance, but through his de- 
 scriptions of character, magnificently rendered ; and 
 finally, this man of genius interprets what I feel, 
 and his works appeal to me more than any others 1 
 have read."
 
 32 EDMONl) AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 And then he continues, in answer evidently to 
 some passage in a letter recently received from his 
 friend — " I thank you sincerely for the advice which 
 you give me as to the necessity of selecting a career. 
 I will only tell you that your exhortations, joined to 
 those of my uncle Jules, unfortunately arrived some- 
 what late. My resolution is quite firm, and nothing 
 will induce me to change it, neither sermons nor ad- 
 vice, not even from you whose friendship is so well 
 proved. To use a common and false expression, I 
 mean to do nothing. By doing this I know^ I shall 
 expose myself to constant criticism from a certain 
 portion of my family, who would fain make them- 
 selves responsible for my happiness by placing me 
 into one of those offices where figures are totted up 
 and letters copied, and which are the accepted outlets 
 of almost all the young men of my position. But 
 what would you have ? I am absolutely without 
 ambition. I know my lack of it is monstrous, but 
 so it is. I would not accept the most honourable 
 and lucrative post in the world, and were it given 
 to me I would have none of it. I object to all those 
 public functions and offices w^liich are now so much 
 sought for, and above all, I do not think one of them 
 worth the stooping necessary to obtain it. This is 
 my opinion, and as the affair concerns myself, I have 
 the right to think as I choose. 
 
 " Oh, I know very well what answer you will make 
 to me. ' Everybody does something.' My family 
 say the same thing, ' See what others are doing.' 
 Now is this a serious, a really serious argument?
 
 THE BROTHERS' JOURNEY TO ALGIERS 33 
 
 It is absolutely as if one wished to dress all the 
 world — short and tall, humpbacked and straight — 
 in the same suit. 
 
 " All that remains to me now is to give your hand 
 a hearty shake, and to threaten you with another 
 dull letter if you again attack Victor Hugo and my 
 independence — a man and a thing to which I hold." 
 
 The Grande Chartreuse seems to have made a 
 great impression on the two young tourists. But 
 it was not until they reached Algiers that we find 
 them speaking with real enthusiasm of their 
 journey : and it was to this short sojourn in Africa 
 that M. Edmond de Goncourt attributes his own 
 and his brother's first genuine impulsion towards a 
 literary career. 
 
 " Algiers, 24th November 1849. 
 
 " It is surely flattering, dear Louis, to receive letters 
 dated from the land of dates, of the Couscoussou, 
 and of the Bedouin. You see now what it is to 
 have tourist friends, who write you nice long letters. 
 
 "Embarked on the 5th, on the 7th I touched 
 African soil ; since then I have done nothing but 
 run over Algiers, a pencil in one hand, and a paint- 
 brush in the other. 
 
 "From my windows I command the vast blue 
 Mediterranean, bounded far away perhaps by some 
 detached link of the Atlas Mountains. The 
 muezzin is lamenting on the roof of the mosque, 
 and I can hear the guttural cries of the Moorish 
 porters, bearing heavy weights along the Rue de 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 34 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 la Marine. You must admit that it is a triumph of 
 local colour. 
 
 " I can't help thinking, dear hoy, that travellers 
 have been created to make others picture the 
 countries they are visiting. Now do they re- 
 ligiously fulfil this rdlef From what they have 
 hitherto said, Algiers passes for a completely French 
 town, picturesque as is a sous-jyrefecture boasting 
 of omnibuses, street lamps, pavements, &c., &c., and 
 other embellishments which make painters and 
 poets gnash their teeth. Well, this was a preju- 
 dice, and a dishonouring prejudice. Algiers con- 
 tains three French streets, all the rest are Arab — 
 streets, dear boy, where two people cannot walk 
 abreast, and enamelled with costumes — what cos- 
 tumes ! Listen. 
 
 "A strange, picturesque Babel of costumes. 
 The Arab, draped in his white burnous ; the Jewess, 
 with her pyramidal sarma ; the Moorish woman, a 
 white ghost with gleaming eyes ; the Negro, with 
 his yellow INladras handkerchief, and his blue striped 
 shirt ; the iSIoor, with his red turban and vest, 
 white trousers and yellow slippers ; the Jewish 
 children, loaded with velvets and gilded orna- 
 ments ; the rich Turk, with turban glittering with 
 embroidery ; the Zouave, — and as background to 
 this crazy patchwork of colour, the sad uniformity 
 of our European dress. ... 
 
 " We pace the streets of Algiers at all hours of 
 the night and day. The Arabs are absolutely in- 
 offensive. . . Decidedly there are but two towns in
 
 THEIR RETURN TO PARIS 35 
 
 the world, Paris and Algiers. Paris, the city of all 
 the world ; Algiers, the city of the artist. . . . 
 
 "We shall leave here the loth of December, and 
 be in Paris on the 1 7th. ... By the way, is Eachel 
 really going to act Marion Delorme ? If this is 
 true I retain you for a partner, even if we have to 
 form part of a gallery queue for two hours." 
 
 Africa had so entirely conquered the two brothers 
 that they made up their minds to return and live 
 there, as soon as the business connected with 
 their mother's will and property should be settled. 
 Indeed, hearing that an expedition to Timbuctoo 
 was being organised for the following year, they 
 actually put down their names among those who 
 wished to join the expedition. But Paris soon re- 
 gained her place in their heart, and Louis Passy 
 heard no more of African schemes. 
 
 The first winter of their life in Paris with- 
 out their mother, was almost entirely devoted by 
 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt to drawing and 
 painting. On their return from Algiers they had 
 installed themselves at No. 43 Kiie Saint Georges, 
 in a pretty apartment situated on the third floor, 
 destined to be during the next twenty years their 
 abode, and the silent witness of their joys and 
 sorrows, disappointments and triumphs. 
 
 In the spring of 1850 they went through Switzer- 
 land and Belgium, and settled down for the summer 
 months at Sainte Adresse, the bright little town 
 which forms so pleasant a suburb to Havre, where
 
 36 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 we learn, from a letter written by Jnles to Louis 
 Passy, they spent a delightful holiday, reading 
 Shakespere and Kabelais, lying full length on the 
 grassy cliffs, " like lizards in the sun," and taking 
 long walks in wooded lanes, where now and again 
 they came upon some rustic farm or picturesque 
 cottage, which formed the subject of a study in 
 drawing or water-colour. When tired of walking 
 they went fishing. In this same letter there is also 
 a word let drop as to Jules' coming literary pro- 
 chvities, for we are told he amused himself " between 
 two tides," with writing nineteen chapters of a work 
 which he dared not entitle a story. So as not to 
 lose all touch with what was going on in Paris, the 
 two brothers became subscribers to the Peuple and 
 to the AssemUee Nationale ; as the first named of 
 these papers w^as Radical, and the second Conserva- 
 tive in opinion, they were able to see both sides of 
 the then political questions of the day.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Literary debuts — First essays in dramatic writing — Country holidays 
 —The de Goncourts' first book, En i8 * *— The Coup-d'Mat— 
 A review by Jules Janin — A weekly newspaper — The brothers 
 enter journalism — They make the acquaintance of Gavarni the 
 caricaturist — A letter from Victor Hugo to Janin. 
 
 When describing the brothers' first essay in htera- 
 ture we cannot do better than quote M. de Gon- 
 court's own words : " It was during one autumn 
 evening of the year 1850. . . . The lamp-light had 
 obliged us to put away our painting, and impelled 
 by I know not what inspiration, we sat down at the 
 great table on which we generally worked at our 
 water-colours, and began to write a vaudeville, our 
 pen being a brush dipped in Chinese ink." 
 
 The two brothers baptized their little play Sans 
 Titre, and in fear and trembling took the manuscript 
 to Sainville, then a well-known actor of the Palais 
 Royal Theatre. The comedy would probably have 
 finally seen the footlights, had not the principal 
 incident in the play been, by some strange coinci- 
 dence, duplicated in Le Bourreau des Crdnes, a 
 vaudeville produced shortly after at the Varietes. 
 But this non-success does not seem to have cast 
 down either author, for whilst negotiations were still 
 
 pending, Jules writes to Louis Passy : "Whatever 
 
 37
 
 38 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 happens we can claim an ample provision of energy, 
 of resignation, and of activity. It is only by knock- 
 ing often that one ends by getting in." 
 
 Their next attempt, a three-act comedy, may be 
 said to have been a reminiscence of their Algerian 
 tour, and had for title Ahoit Hassan. This play 
 was also offered to the Palais Royal, but it failed 
 to find a home in any Paris theatre, and was, 
 together with Sans Titre, finally burnt by the young 
 dramatists. 
 
 The winter and spring of 1851 were spent in 
 painting, and in a journey through Southern France, 
 when they made purchases in the far-famed curiosity 
 shops of Dijon ; for even at this period of their joint 
 lives Messieurs de Goncourt had already developed 
 the love of rare and precious books, tapestries, en- 
 gravings, &c., &c., which later took with them such 
 vast proportions. 
 
 June found them drinking the waters at Loeche- 
 les-Bains, a Swiss cure ; and it was there, in the 
 intervals between the treatment, and a few excur- 
 sions into the mountains, that the brothers began 
 En 18 . . , their first joint essay in novel writing. 
 
 From Louche they went to Neufchateau to attend 
 a girl cousin's wedding : and Jules' impression of 
 this sudden plunge into family life may be gathered 
 from a passage in one of his letters to Tjouis Passy : — 
 
 " Septeviher y, 185 1. 
 
 "Ouf! ouf ! ouf! dear Louis. ... It all bea'an 
 on the 28th of August and continued till the 6th of
 
 A FAMILY WEDDING 39 
 
 September; August boasts of thirty-one days, and 
 we enjoyed two large meals each day ; you can 
 easily calculate to what all this amounted. Six hours 
 out of the twenty-four spent in inglutition ! Then 
 dessert, coffee, liqueurs, and white favours galore. 
 No change, no rest ! I was best man, general 
 manager, and organiser of all the fetes ! The 
 cooking — but how can I attempt to describe the 
 cooking ! Bells ringing, hobble-de-hoys running 
 wild, postillions swathed in ribbons, gala coaches, 
 white gowns, the fatal ' I will ' . . . and the whole 
 time, before, during, and after, the kettles singing, 
 the pots boiling, the sauces simmering, and insides 
 loading — Ouf ! ouf ! ouf ! " 
 
 But notwithstanding the cares of this family 
 festival, the authors worked on steadily at their 
 book, spending hours in the Neufchateau Town 
 Library, and, as Jules expressed it, " working them- 
 selves to death." 
 
 On the 25th of October they returned to their 
 quiet rooms in the Rue Saint Georges, and within 
 a few days of giving over their precious manuscript 
 to Gardes, the printer, who then published the 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, Jules gave an idea of his 
 own and his brother's state of mind when writing 
 to Louis Passy : — 
 
 " I have nothing to say, I know nothing of what is 
 going on round us. . . . We devote all our thoughts 
 to our child, and hope to give it over to the mid- 
 wife towards the 5th of next month. You see we
 
 40 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 are under fire, but working not a little for our own 
 pleasure. . . 
 
 " When one has laboured ten months on a work 
 one is glad when the day comes of going to press. 
 Going to press ! those words thrill me deeply ! . . . 
 
 *' Our friend, P. C, de Villedeuil, is going into the 
 breach rather before ourselves ; I fancy his book 
 will appear towards the loth ; but he publishing 
 a political work, will have on his side all the news- 
 papers belonging to his party, as well as the sixty- 
 three wine-producing departments to which he has 
 dedicated his book, and Avhere it will be singularly 
 apropos : being A History of the Tax on Alcoholic 
 Drinks. You see that this would not be quite 
 our style. After all, if no one takes our part, you 
 will tell me that we shall have the shade of Sterne : 
 still it remains to be known whether his ghost will 
 recognise us. ... 
 
 " A review has lately been published, the first 
 number of Avhich promises to be the very thing for 
 us, the Revue de Paris, which, dealing with new 
 schools of literature, is under the patronage of 
 Theophile Gautier. 
 
 " I am writing you an egoistical letter; Montaigne's 
 ' 1 ' is enthroned without a rival. I beg of you to 
 take your revenge when answering me. By the 
 way, I do not know if I have already told you that 
 I believe the Joinville candidature has a certain 
 chance of success with the peasantry, at any rate in 
 our part of the world, that is, in the Vosges ; for this 
 is the textual answer made by one of our farmers
 
 AN EVENTFUL DAY 41 
 
 when asked to give us his opinions on de Joinville 
 — 'Joinville? Ah! I should like to have him. 
 He has never harmed anybody ! ' This phrase is 
 a symptom. . . ." 
 
 The de Goncourts' literary debiU was fixed 
 all unknowingly for an eventful day, the 2nd of 
 December 1851. M. Edmond de Goncourt has 
 told the story of this, their first experience of 
 authorship, in the preface to the Belgian edition 
 of I^n 18.. 
 
 "On the 1st of December we went to bed, my 
 brother and I, in the happy state of mind common 
 to young authors, who await the coming morning 
 in order to see their first volume on sale in every 
 bookseller's shop. AVe were dreaming of editions 
 — numberless editions, — when suddenly, after a loud 
 knocking at the door, in rushed our cousin Blamont, 
 once a National Guard, but now a grey-haired, asth- 
 matical, violent old Conservative. 
 
 " ' Good God : it's come upon us ! ' he exclaimed. 
 
 " ' What has ? ' 
 
 '"The coivp-cVetat!' 
 
 " ' The devil ! And our novel which was to be put 
 on sale to-day . . . ! ' 
 
 "'Your novel— a novel? Ah, my fine fellows, 
 France won't trouble herself much about novels 
 to-day,' and with a gesture peculiar to himself, he 
 buttoned up his coat as tightly as if he had been 
 drawing up a sword belt, took a brief leave of us, 
 and went off" to carry the triumphant news from the 
 district of Notre Dame de Lorette to his acquaint-
 
 42 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 ances, then scarcely out of their hods, in the 
 Faubourcj St. Germain." 
 
 As may be easily imagined, the unfortunate 
 authors of En 1 8 . . soon went down into the street, 
 looking eagerly, since more substantial joys seemed 
 delayed, at the wall where an advertisement of their 
 book was to have been posted early that morning. 
 But they soon found that the advertisement was 
 conspicuous by its absence, and it was only some 
 days later that they discovered what had occurred. 
 Gardes' printing-offices had been searched by the 
 police, who, during the night preceding the coup- 
 cVetat, made many perquisitions in order to strike 
 terror into the hearts of law-abiding Parisians, and 
 afraid lest the de Goncourts' cabalistic title should 
 be thought to bear a hidden allusion to 1 8 Brumaire, 
 the printer burnt all the advertisements which were 
 to have spread the fame of En i8 . . to the four 
 corners of Paris. 
 
 Thus, to the two young authors' sad disappoint- 
 ment, their novel was not put on sale till two days 
 later, the 4th of December : but the book-buying 
 public had other things to think of than that of 
 adding to their libraries, and for some days, no one, 
 even among their own journalistic acquaintances, 
 seemed to be aware that the brothers had joined 
 the great army of litterateurs. 
 
 Jules Janin, the famous critic, was at this period 
 contributing a weekly theatrical and WtexziYy feuilleton 
 to the Journcd des Debctts ; and during the week 
 which followed the coiq'xVetat, his readers waited
 
 A REVIEW BY JULES JANIN 43 
 
 with some amusement for the Monday week follow- 
 ing the great event, since, though his interests ran 
 in other directions, Janin sometimes condescended 
 to write a witty column of political criticism, and 
 seldom had he had such an opportunity. What, 
 then, was the surprise of his friends and readers, 
 when opening the Dehats on the 15th of December 
 1 85 1, they found that, so far from attacking the 
 Prince-President, Janin had devoted his feuilleton 
 to reviewing En 18 . . , the first work of two un- 
 known writers. 
 
 Yet, to those behind the scenes, the great critic's 
 action had at least one explanation. Jules de 
 Goncourt was an ardent admirer of Janin' s style, 
 and though En 18.. was nothing if not original in 
 conception and character, yet the novel (a strange 
 cabalistic study of a man who is in love, simulta- 
 neously with a female spy and an artist's model) 
 belonged to the school of literary composition 
 inaugurated by Janin himself in his story, EAne 
 Mort et la Femme Guillotinee, an extraordinary 
 parody of Bug-Jardal, ou le Dernier Jour d'un 
 Condamne. But whatever the reason which made 
 him devote an article to En 18 . . , the kindly 
 satire of the critic of the Dehats, and the few words 
 of judicious advice with which he wound up his 
 review of their book, encouraged the brothers to go 
 on working in the face of bitter disappointment. 
 Of the thousand copies printed, only some sixty 
 oi En 18 . . changed hands, and they were almost 
 all, without exception, presentation copies. The
 
 44 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 remainder were piled up in a garret and forgotten 
 till many years later, when Jnles and Edmond, 
 while searching for a book they were in need of, 
 came upon the heap of old volumes, and began 
 glancing through the already forgotten pages ; find- 
 ing the work " childish, feeble, and incomplete," 
 they deliberately burnt every copy, and this is why 
 the first edition of En i8 . . has become one of 
 the literary rarities of the century, for the French 
 bibliomaniac who possesses the shabby little book 
 in his library can indeed boast of a treasure. 
 
 Some years ago a Belgian publisher, M. Kiste- 
 raaeckers of Brussels, begged M. Edmond de Gon- 
 court to allow him to republish En iS , . , and thus 
 the de Goncourts' first book once more saw the light, 
 this time enriched with a witty preface, in which 
 the surviving author told the history of its first 
 appearance and disappearance. 
 
 As is the custom in France, the brothers called 
 on Jules Janin, to thank him for the article which 
 had given them such pleasure. The critic then 
 lived in a vast appartement in the Rue de Vau- 
 girard, close to the Luxembourg, and there, doubt- 
 less assisted by the legendary talking parrot, who 
 was said to help him in the composition of his 
 feuilletons, he received Jules and Edmond with the 
 words, " You are exactly the couple I took you to 
 be ! " And when bidding them au revoir, M. Janin 
 observed significantly, " For those who wish to 
 succeed there is only the drama." And during their 
 long walk home, the critic's late visitors composed
 
 THE BROTHERS AS PLAYWRIGHTS 45 
 
 together viva voce a one-act piece, in which there 
 shoukl be but two characters, that of a pretty woman 
 and that of a man of the world, talking over the 
 fire, on the last evening of the old year, of the 
 events of the preceding twelve months. The 
 witty little dialogue, which might even now serve 
 as a model to many modern French dramatists, was 
 submitted to Jules Janin, who gave the authors 
 an introduction to Madame Allan, the societaii^e of 
 the Comedie Francaise, who had just played with 
 great success in de Musset's ^' II faut qitune porte 
 soil ouverte ou fermeer 
 
 " And so we finally found ourselves on the fifth 
 floor of a house in the Rue Mogador, for it was 
 there the actress lived who brought Musset back 
 from Russia. She was giving the last finishing- 
 touches to her toilet, in front of a folding mirror 
 which surrounded her like a screen. The great 
 comedienne was quite affable and kindly, but with 
 a voice so rough and croaky that we scarcely recog- 
 nised the sound, so entirely did she possess the 
 art of transforming her voice, so that it recalled 
 sweet music when she was on the stage. 
 
 " She made an appointment with us for the next 
 day. I was much moved, but Madame Allan, to 
 encourage us during the reading, let fall those 
 little flattering murmurs for which one would will- 
 ingly kiss the slippers of an actress. In short, she 
 accepted the part, and undertook to learn it, and 
 to play it on the 31st of December; to-day being 
 the 2 1 St."
 
 46 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 Full of hope, the two dramatists hurried hither 
 and thither, seeing an actor here, a manager there ; 
 but finally, after a week's time and effort wasted, 
 Madame Allan changed her mind, to the bitter 
 disappointment of the two brothers, and La Nuit 
 de la Saint Sylvestre, as the play was called, was 
 never staged. But though this was their third 
 dramatic failure, the brothers did not lose heart, 
 but continued writing plays, according to the advice 
 of Jules Janin, without, however, any success ; in- 
 deed, one comedy, entitled Les Inci^oyahles, and 
 dealing with a First Empire divorce, was hopelessly 
 lost by the readers of the Theatre Frangais, and has 
 never been found to this day. Years later, the 
 de Goncourts referred to this far from promising- 
 literary debut in the following passage : — " Why 
 did we not describe day by day our rough and 
 terrible struggle against anonymity, the painful 
 occasions in which we were overlooked or in- 
 sulted : the public we sought, but who eluded us ; 
 the future towards which we walked at times with 
 resignation, but oftener in despair. We had no 
 friends, no connections, and everything was closed 
 to us. Alas ! for the organised silence in which 
 those who desire the benefits of recognition are 
 passed over — the grief-laden and heart-breaking 
 hours we spent — come back to us. Ah ! that 
 silent, inward agony, where none looked on but 
 our bleeding self-consciousness, and our fainting 
 hearts : that monotonous and uneventful suffering, 
 written as it were on our quivering flesh. What
 
 COMTE CHARLES DE VILLEDEUIL 47 
 
 a fine subject for analysis ; but no writer will ever 
 write it — for the slightest success, a publisher who 
 accepts your work, the gain of a few hundred francs, 
 a number of articles taken at five or six sous a 
 line, the bringing of your name before the public, 
 any one of these occurrences helps to cure the past, 
 and to lap us round with the waters of Lethe." 
 
 About a month before the publication of En 
 18 . . , the de Goncourts renewed acquaintance 
 with their cousin, Comte Charles de Villedeuil. 
 
 " One morning there was a ring at the door ; a 
 hirsute and serious young man, whom we hardly re- 
 cognised, was shown in. . . . When quite a child he 
 already aped the man, and had been expelled from 
 the College Stanislas. As a schoolboy of fifteen 
 I had once sat next him at dinner, and he had 
 made me open my eyes wide with astonishment at 
 the orgies which he described. Even then he was 
 already dabbling in literature, and always corrected 
 the proofs of his tutor Tanoski. At twenty he held 
 Republican opinions, and had grown a beard. He 
 wore a pointed hat of dead leaf colour, talked about 
 ' my political party,' wrote in the Liberie de-Penser, 
 compounded terrible articles against the Inquisition, 
 and lent money to X the philosopher." 
 
 The three cousins soon became inseparable, 
 Charles working more or less seriously at his 
 History of the Tax on Alcoholic Liquors, Edmond 
 and Jules writing their novel, and later a play. 
 
 " One evening in a cafe near the Gymnase, by 
 way of having something to do, we amused our-
 
 48 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 selves by suggesting different names for a new 
 paper. ' L Eclair ! ' exclaimed Villedeuil gaily, and 
 then still laughing, ' Apropos, suppose we start a 
 paper of that name, eh ? ' He left us full of his 
 idea, sought out the money-lenders, thought out 
 a frontispiece which was to exhibit the names of 
 Hugo, de Musset, and George Sand, falling in 
 streaks of forked lightning on the Institute. He 
 bought a Bottin Directory, and busied himself in 
 sending out circulars to all his friends." The Censor 
 suppressed the frontispiece, but on the I2tli of 
 January 1852, L Eclair made its first weekly bow 
 to the public of advanced thinkers and writers, 
 with a view to whom the proprietor-editor, Charles 
 de Villedeuil, had founded the journal. 
 
 E Eclair had for sub-title Bevue Hebdomadaire 
 de la Littcrature des Theatres et des Arts, and like 
 most would-be newspaper proprietors, the young 
 editor and his friends expected to make both their 
 fortune and their fame out of the venture. The 
 office was on the ground floor of a house in the Rue 
 d'Aumale ; and M. de Villedeuil and the two de 
 Goncourts seem to have composed the whole stafi". 
 The first number of E Eclair, now greatly prized 
 by collectors of literary curiosities, contained three 
 articles by the two brothers ; one was on their 
 book En 18 . . , followed by the first real news- 
 paper article ever published by them, and which 
 consisted of a study of the famous actor, Fechter. 
 The public was supposed to know nothing of the 
 authorship of the various articles, and Villedeuil
 
 THE STORY OF "L'ECLAIR' 49 
 
 sometimes signed his compositions, " Cornelius 
 Wolff." 
 
 "The head-quarters of our newspaper," wrote 
 Jules de Goncourt, "are on the ground floor of a 
 house in a new street, the Rue d'Aumale. We 
 spend two or three hours each week in the office, 
 awaiting, each time we hear a step echoing down the 
 quiet street, a subscriber or at least a contributor ! 
 Nothing comes, not even ' copy,' not even, and this 
 is stranger still, a poet!" A few days later — 
 " We continue publishing our paper with the faith 
 of apostles, and the illusions common to share- 
 holders. Villedeuil has been obliged to sell his 
 collection of Ordonnances cles Rois de France, to 
 prolong its existence ; he has also got hold of a 
 money-lender, from whom he has extracted five or 
 six thousand francs." 
 
 But part of the value of the above six thousand 
 francs had been delivered in the form of two hun- 
 dred bottles of champagne, and undismayed, M. de 
 Villedeuil proposed that the editors of L Eclair 
 should advertise their paper by giving a ball, at 
 which the champagne should be offered to new 
 readers in return for subscriptions. The idea was 
 actually carried out, and a merry Bohemian gather- 
 ing took place ; but though it is reasonable to sup- 
 pose that the champagne was all drunk, there is no 
 record of new subscriptions having flowed in on this 
 occasion. 
 
 It was during this year, 1852, that the brothers 
 made the acquaintance of Gavarni the caricaturist, a 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 so EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 brilliant artist, sometimes called the French Cruik- 
 shank, and who had, for good or evil, a distinct 
 influence both on the future lives and writings of 
 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. 
 
 In his personal Memoirs, which will only see the 
 light after his death, the elder of the two brothers 
 sums up in a few words what both he and his^ljrother 
 asserted so frequently in their diary: "Yes, I repeat 
 this, my profession of faith, the two greatest of our 
 century are Balzac and Gavarni, the first who created 
 the Comedie Humaine with his pen, the second who 
 completed the same task with his pencil ; the last is 
 as great as the first." 
 
 In the de Goncourts' remarkable study of their 
 old friend's life and work, they have described him 
 as he seemed when he first appeared to them : 
 *' Gavarni was tall and well-built. . . . ^A'hen he 
 was dressed, wearing a frock-coat buttoned up to 
 the chin, he had the smart, trim figure of a man of 
 thirty. In his youth his hair and moustache must 
 have been reddish in tint, but at the time we made 
 his acquaintance his hair was grey, or rather ash- 
 colour." 
 
 Even when they were children Gavarni had been 
 a hero to the de Goncourts, and when in response 
 to a courteous note they set out to see him in his 
 house at Point du Jour, a village situated on the 
 road to Versailles, Edmond and Jules felt that they 
 were on the point of realising one of their most 
 Ionc;ed-for wishes. 
 
 Jules records what took place : " They were a long
 
 A VISIT TO GAVARNI 51 
 
 time opening the door ; at last a servant appeared 
 and took us to a little studio in the garden, lighted 
 from above and full of sunlight. It was here that 
 we made our first visit to Gavarni. 
 
 " He took us through his house and told us its 
 story : a workshop of false money coiners during 
 the Directoire, it became in time the property of the 
 well-known Leroy, Josephine's mantle-maker, and 
 he utilised the iron room in which had been coined 
 the money, to hang up Napoleon's bee-embroidered 
 state mantles. Gavarni led us across the large rooms 
 on the ground floor, . . . and we followed him all 
 over the house, and down interminable corridors on 
 the second floor, where out of women's bandboxes 
 old ill-packed carnival costumes peeped." 
 
 During the year 1852 the de Goncourts did little 
 else but write regularly for the Comte de Villedeuil's 
 weekly paper, and this brought them into close re- 
 lations with most of the leading journalists and 
 writers of the day. We catch in the diary a glimpse 
 of a merry band of holiday makers at Marlotte, the 
 village still beloved of poets and painters in the 
 Forest of Fontainebleau. Pere Saccaux then kept 
 the only hostelry, and there, each paying his share, 
 the whole party, including Edmond and Jules de 
 Goncourt, Murger "leading his vie de Boheme in 
 sober earnest," Hafner the painter, Gavarni, and 
 many more whose names are now unknown to 
 fame, stayed some days, drinking in the pure air, 
 and taking long excursions into the great forest 
 which lay round them.
 
 52 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 By August the dc Goncourts were back in Paris, 
 paying a visit to their literary godfather, Jules Janin. 
 " He showed us a letter from Victor Hugo, brought 
 by Mdlle. Thuillier, and made us read the follow- 
 ing sentence : ' Here is it very melancholy ... it 
 rains, and is as if tears were falling.' In the letter 
 Hugo thanked Janin for his article on the sale of his 
 furniture, told him that his book would appear in a 
 month's time, and that he would send him a copy 
 either in a basket of fish or in a metal case ; and he 
 added, ' They say that after the appearance of this 
 book Bonaparte will expel me from the Academy. 
 I bequeath you my seat.'"
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Paris, a daily literary pa^^er • — Edmond and Jiiles de Goncourt 
 supcenaed to appear before the Courts — Their offence — A literary 
 cause-celebre — The brothers give up their connection with daily 
 journalism — Publication of La Lorette — An autumn holidays- 
 Millet and Jacques — Anecdote. 
 
 In the autumn of the same year the Comte de 
 Villedeuil, in nowise dismayed by the faihire of 
 L Eclair, determined to start a daily paper modelled 
 on the Charivari, but which should be only literary, 
 dramatic, and artistic, that is to say, non-political. 
 The de Goncourts entered into the scheme with 
 ardour, and on the 20th of October Jules wrote 
 in their diary: "The first number of Paris comes 
 out to-day. We believe it to be the first literary 
 daily paper started since the creation of the world. 
 We have written the leading article." 
 
 The two brothers suggested to their cousin 
 the advisability of asking Gavarni to become a 
 regular contributor to their paper, and the carica- 
 turist, then at the height of his popularity, promised 
 to provide an illustration every day for a year, and 
 strange to say, kept his word scrupulously during 
 the whole twelve months. 
 
 Inasmuch as LEclair had been an unsuccess- 
 ful, and, if we may so term it, amateur production, 
 
 53
 
 54 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 the Paris became popular with the class for which 
 it was specially written from the first day of its 
 appearance. A whole band of yoimg writers, many 
 of whom were destined afterwards to take a great 
 place in ephemeral French literature, were constant 
 contributors to its columns, and Alphonse Karr, 
 Xavier de Montepin, Theodore de Banville, and 
 the two de Goncourts became known to the French 
 reading world first through the Paris. 
 
 The offices of the paper were situated in the 
 Rue Bergere, off the Boulevard des Italiens, and 
 all bohemian Paris passed and repassed through 
 the strange unbusiness-like suite of apartments'. 
 M. de Villedeuil's study was hung with black, 
 now and again all the lights would be put out, 
 and a weird drinking party would take place. 
 The manager, a certain INI. Barbier, boasted of the 
 only regular office-like room on the Paris floor. 
 " At the office writing-table there daily assembled 
 Murger, with his humble mien : Aurdlien Scholl, 
 with his eyeglass screwed into one eye, his witty 
 fits of anger, and his oft-reiterated intention of some 
 day earning 50,000 francs a year by writing endless 
 novels ; Banville, with his pallid face, his thin voice, 
 subtle paradoxes, and amusing human silhouettes ; 
 Karr, always accompanied by the inseparable Ga- 
 tayes . . . and in the midst of all this world of 
 penmen, Villedeuil perorating, giving orders right 
 and left, running here and there, writing letters, 
 inventing every few days a new advertising system, 
 or a fresh combination, which would infallibly bring
 
 A LITERARY CAUSE CEL^BRE 55 
 
 the paper within the next fortnight ten thousand 
 subscribers ! " 
 
 M. de Villedeuil, however, did not foresee the 
 event which was to make his paper known to every 
 reader in Paris. "Towards the end of December," 
 say the de Goncourts when describing what took 
 place, " Villedeuil rushed into the office, and ex- 
 claimed in a melodramatic tone, ' The Pains is 
 being prosecuted. Two articles are incriminated ; 
 the one is by Karr, the other is that in which there 
 are some verses. . . . Who has quoted verses during 
 the last month 1 ' 
 
 '"We did!' we cried." 
 
 And here must be told the story of one of the 
 most curious French literary trials of the century, 
 and which may rank with that of Flaubert anent 
 Madame Bovary, and Baudelaire with his Fleurs 
 du Mai. Of the group who wrote in the Paris, 
 the de Goncourts seemed the least likely to have 
 written anything which could be said to outrage 
 public morality : but the unexpected always hap- 
 pens. Mademoiselle Nathalie, a Pensionnaire of the 
 Comedie Frangaise, having sent to Rachel, by way 
 of compliment, a small painting by Diaz, represent- 
 ing Venus and Adonis, the latter refused to accept 
 the picture ; both her letter refusing the gift, and 
 Mademoiselle Nathalie's reply, formed part of the 
 autograph collection of Jules Janin, who allowed 
 his young friends to copy the epistles. The de Gon- 
 courts saw therein matter for an amusing article ; 
 accordingly, on the 15th of December, seven weeks
 
 56 EDMONI) AND JULES DE (^.ONCOURT 
 
 after the publication of the first number of the 
 Paris, there appeared on tlie first page of the paper 
 an article entitled, " A Journey from No. 43 Hue Saint 
 Georges to No. i Rue Lafitte," in which they told the 
 story, and quoted tlie following letter and answer, 
 without, however, giving the ladies' names. 
 
 "My dear Comrade, — This Diaz is somewhat 
 too airy for the decoration of my little house. It 
 is true I have a partiality for the suggestiveness 
 of a charming wit, but I cannot pretend to share 
 Arsinoe's admiration for nudities. Do not think 
 me prudish. But why should I deprive you of a 
 painting which I myself should be forced to hide ! 
 A thousand thanks, nevertheless, and believe me, 
 your devoted Comrade, * " 
 
 "Dear Comrade, — It was foolish indeed, nay 
 almost blasphemous, to have imagined that my 
 little picture could be worthy of your surroundings. 
 Nevertheless, my folly has procured for me the 
 inestimable privilege of becoming acquainted with 
 the limits of your modesty. Allow me, however, 
 to defend the passage of a comedy which you here 
 quote in a somewhat strained sense. It is precisely 
 when pictures are in question that Arsinoe does not 
 like nudities : — 
 
 ' She covers with haste the painting's nudities, 
 But turns with pleasure towards realities.' 
 
 " I take back my little Diaz, which is feeling some-
 
 A LITERARY CAUSE CEL^BRE 57 
 
 what confused by its foolhardy journey, and am hiding 
 its blushes in my own room, where only M. A. can 
 see it. — Yours very sincerely, " 
 
 In order to describe the subject of the painting, 
 the brothers borrowed from a collection of French 
 poetry, then recently edited by Sainte-Beuve, and 
 which had been crowned by the Academy, five 
 lines of some verses by Tahureau, a well-known 
 poet of the i8th century. The then Chief of Police, 
 who had not looked with a favourable eye on the 
 new paper, saw here an opportunity of injuring 
 M. de Villedeuil's venture, and the de Goncourts 
 were chosen as scapegoats, as much on account of 
 their supposed Orleanist sympathies as for this 
 quotation. 
 
 Several of their friends and relations wrote to 
 the Attorney-General, M. de Royer, but he replied 
 that nothing good could come of any appeal, and 
 that the two brothers would certainly be condemned, 
 probably to prison, certainly to a fine, but that if 
 they wished to address a petition to the Emperor, 
 he would do what he could to obtain a favourable 
 answer. 
 
 Early in February Jules wrote : — 
 
 "My dear Gavarni, — On Saturday, at eleven 
 o'clock, we shall be in the dock, appearing before 
 the judges in the Sixth Court. We are so busy 
 that we have not time to go to Auteuil. So we 
 are sending you this bad news by letter, knowing
 
 S8 EDAIOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 how sorry you would be if your poor ' little boys ' 
 were brought in guilty. If you have any friend 
 who could be of use, let me know. 
 
 "J. DE GONCOURT." 
 
 In compliance with a curious survival of i8th 
 century courtesy, the two young men, accompanied 
 by their uncle, Jules de Courmont, paid a visit to 
 each of their future judges, and also to the barrister 
 who had been given charge of the Prosecution. 
 
 At last the great day arrived. The three victims 
 were driven down to the law courts in a yellow 
 coach and four, by their cousin and editor, who 
 was much disappointed at not being one of the 
 accused. 
 
 The court, where the trial was about to take place, 
 was in general given over to small and unimportant 
 cases, and "just before our turn a young man of 
 emaciated appearance was tried ; he gave one the 
 appearance, the idea of one who had suffered from 
 hallucinations ; acting on his own judgment he 
 had condemned the Emperor to death, and had 
 sent a copy of the act of condemnation to all the 
 embassies. He was told then and there that he 
 was to spend three years in prison. (It was he who 
 some years later fired at the Emperor at the door 
 of the Opera Comique.) 
 
 *' At last our case was called. The President pro- 
 nounced the words, ' Pass to the bar,' in a way 
 which impressed the public. The bar is the place 
 at which thieves are arraigned. Never in a case
 
 THE SCENE IN COURT 59 
 
 of a press-prosecution, not even in an assize court, 
 had there been an instance of a journalist being 
 told to ' Pass to the bar,' the rule having been that 
 they always remained seated by their counsel. But 
 they were determined to spare us nothing. ' They 
 rehearsed this yesterday ; I was told so by a bar- 
 rister,' said Karr, as he sat down with us between 
 the gendarmes. 
 
 " We were hurt, indignant. Our voices trembled 
 with anger when they asked us our names, and we 
 rang them out defiantly, as if we were addressing 
 a tribunal of blood." 
 
 The Counsel for the Prosecution, though he had 
 told the prisoners during their courtesy call that 
 he personally could see nothing objectionable in 
 their article, declared in court, with a burst of 
 forensic eloquence, that the three writers before 
 him were men without any regard for the law or 
 public morals, that they were nameless rogues, men 
 who had never known a mother's care, and who 
 were without any feeling or respect for womanhood ! 
 The de Goncourts had been guided in the choice 
 of their Counsel by a shrewd old friend, and greatly 
 to his clients' annoyance, he performed his task in 
 the following fashion : " He groaned, he wept over 
 our crime, and depicted us as good, simple young 
 fellows, somewhat foolish — indeed, whose minds 
 were slightly affected. He could find no better 
 extenuating circumstance to urge in our favour 
 than that we had an old servant who had been with 
 us for twenty years ! After this touching statement,
 
 6o EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 which was drowned in a flood of foolish words, 
 we heard the curious murmur, which implies that 
 a case is won, run round the public ; but just 
 at that moment our cause was adjourned to the 
 following week. 'Of course,' we observed, 'they 
 meant to pass a sentence of condemnation at the 
 very outset ; they dared not do it to-day ; the 
 public is too much in our favour.'" 
 
 And yet this eight days' adjournment turned out 
 for the best, for in the interval a new Attorney- 
 General was appointed, and not only was M. Rou- 
 land (de Eoyer's successor) an Orleanist, but he was 
 also a relation of Madame Jules Janin. Thus when 
 the three young men were brought up to receive 
 judgment they were severely reprimanded, but ac- 
 quitted, and allowed to escape free of even a fine. 
 But although they got off with nothing worse than 
 a scolding, the de Goncourts were informed unoffici- 
 ally that they would be wiser to give up journalism, 
 as they were not looked upon with favour at head- 
 quarters. They still continued, however, to contri- 
 bute regularly to the Paris, but the Tahureau 
 incident had filled them both with bitter anger 
 against the Imperial Government, and they had 
 serious thoughts of going to Belgium in order to 
 start a paper, to be styled Le Pampldet. Fortu- 
 nately their increasing interest in their historical 
 studies withdrew them from journalism, and on the 
 27th of April 1853 appeared their last piece of 
 work in the Paris. 
 
 During their connection with LEclair and the
 
 PUBLICATION OF "LA LORETTE " 61 
 
 Paris, the de Goncourts had written many re- 
 markable articles afterwards published in volume 
 form under various titles, Mijsteres cles Theatres 
 (theatrical criticisms), Une Voitiire de Masques, and 
 Pages Retrouvees, all collections of miscellaneous 
 articles ; and La Lorette, which formed part of a 
 series named Lepres Modeimes, which had produced 
 a considerable impression when brought out in 
 L Eclair and the Paris. 
 
 On the 27th of July, Jules de Goncourt notes in 
 the diary : " I have been to see Rouland in order to 
 discover if I can publish La Lorette without fear of 
 new legal difficulties." Apparently the answer was 
 favourable, for the little volume was brought out by 
 Dentu in the early autumn of the same year, and 
 the first edition was sold out in a week. 
 
 La Lorette, which was offered to the public for the 
 modest sum of fifty centimes, was dedicated by the 
 authors to Gavarni, who had drawn a frontispiece for 
 the volume only too truly in touch with the sinister 
 nature of the subject. La Lorette may be said to 
 have been the prototype of Zola's Nana, and in her 
 counterfeit presentment, as imagined by Gavarni, we 
 see a touch of that attraction to England and things 
 English, which formed so strong a part of the com- 
 plex nature of the caricaturist, for in the original 
 design he introduced a placard on which were in- 
 scribed the w^ords, To let. 
 
 The unexpected success of this little volume was 
 a revelation to the brothers. " This makes us 
 realise," they wrote, "that one can actually sell a
 
 62 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 book ! " And they continued working with renewed 
 hope and energy. 
 
 They spent September at Venles, the Norman 
 fishing village — " a lonely spot, where it would be 
 easy to be quite happy were it not that there is 
 only one inn, and in this inn an innkeeper whose 
 only idea of food consists of ducks served in two 
 fashions." The brothers were asked to come to 
 Veules by the engraver, Louis Leroy, and his wife, 
 a charming couple, to whom constant reference is 
 made in the diary. On the 30th of August Jules 
 writes to his host — " We shall only be able to leave 
 on Saturday the third (of September), and so, unless 
 we should both die before then, which I trust is 
 unlikely, we shall find ourselves at Veules at four 
 o'clock in the afternoon. . . ." 
 
 The Leroys were intimate with all the younger 
 artists of the day, and when not bathing or paint- 
 ing the four friends had endless discussions about 
 Millet, whose great talent had only been recognised 
 by the general public some four years previously. 
 
 "Millet, the son of a peasant near Cherbourg, 
 when little more than a child, whilst on the road 
 from the town where he had seen the pictures 
 in the public gallery, would draw with pen and 
 pencil, worrying his father to give him the pence 
 wherewith to purchase materials. His first draw- 
 ings were copies of the holy pictures taken from 
 his grandmother's prayer-book. Some years later, 
 when his father took him to a Cherbourg drawing 
 master, and showed the latter some of his son's
 
 MILLET AT BARBIZON 63 
 
 pencil drawings, the master said, ' It is monstrous 
 to leave such a child working in the fields.' Finally 
 the town of Cherbourg gave him the small allow- 
 ance which enabled him to enter the studio of 
 Paul Delaroche. 
 
 " His wife, a regular peasant woman, can neither 
 read nor write. When Millet leaves home the 
 husband and wife correspond together by a system 
 of dots they have invented for the purpose. 
 
 " One day, during his first visit to Barbizon, he 
 was taking a walk with Jacques, when they came 
 upon some peasants mowing ; the latter laughed at 
 the two artists as town's-folk. Millet walked up to 
 them, pretended not to understand what they were 
 doing, asked if a scythe really cuts the grass 
 properly, and if it was hard work : then, seizing a 
 scythe, he began to lay about him right and left, 
 and showed the astonished peasantry that he also 
 knew a thing or two ! " 
 
 On the 7th of September Jules de Goncourt 
 writes from Veules a long letter to Gavarni. " Can- 
 not you come and spend eight days with your little 
 man ? Our colony is composed of four people, 
 M. and Madame Leroy and ourselves, all ready 
 to welcome you, and delighted at the thought of 
 having your company. . . . The life here is very 
 simple and quiet. We get up and have lunch ; then, 
 while M. Leroy goes out sketching, we write, and 
 Madame Leroy imitates the labours of Penelope. 
 Each brings to dinner whatever appetite he can 
 boast of, and in the evening we allow ourselves to
 
 64 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 be blown to pieces by the sharp sea wind. Add a 
 few baths when the sun is kind enough to shine 
 down on us, and you will, my dear friend, have a 
 clear idea of what the life here is like. . . ." 
 
 The extraordinary success of La Lorette not only 
 delighted the two authors, but encouraged them to 
 think of undertaking another small volume of the 
 same kind and to be sold at the same price. After 
 casting about for a good subject they decided on 
 a short volume dealing with the Histoire du Plaisir 
 sous la Terreur, for Edmond and Jules had always 
 felt a special interest in the social history of the 
 great Revolution. But they soon found that the 
 subject lent itself to far more serious and lengthy 
 treatment than they had at first imagined, and soon 
 the tiny booklet they had thought of writing grew 
 into the volume which finally appeared under the 
 title of Histoire de la Societe pendant la Revo- 
 lution.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Histoire de la Socie'te "pendant la Re'vohUion — Eecei^tion of the book by 
 the critics — Letter from Jules de Goncourt to Gavarni — Publication 
 of Histoire de la Societe" pendant le Directoire — Letters to Aurelien 
 Scholl — Gavarni's description of Balzac, the Duchesse d'Abrantes, 
 Madame Eecamier. 
 
 The winter of 1854 was entirely spent by the de 
 Goncourts working in the various libraries and 
 public and private archives, thrown open to them 
 by the kindness of their many friends. With 
 characteristic energy the brothers, in order to make 
 it impossible for them to accept social invitations, 
 gave away their dress clothes, and they bought hun- 
 dreds of pamphlets and papers then comparatively 
 worthless, but which have since acquired a great 
 historical interest, and now form part of M. Edmond 
 de Goncourt's priceless collection. 
 
 La Terreur, in the year 1854, was still a memory 
 to the aged, and a familiar theme of conversation 
 to all those whose childhood had been steeped in 
 hearing their parents and grandparents tell the story 
 of the Revolution. Until Messieurs de Goncourt 
 brought out their work, nothing in the shape 
 of an impartial statement of what living Paris 
 was really like during those strange years, had 
 
 been attempted. Lamartine, Michelet, Louis Blanc, 
 VOL. I. ^5 E
 
 66 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 and Mignet had all told the story according to 
 their various political prejudices and temperaments. 
 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt studied the period 
 with A\hich they were ahout to deal as passionless 
 observers, simply noting day by day, and hour by 
 hour, any little fact, anecdote, or trait which could 
 add to the completeness of their picture ; indeed 
 their historical works all differ from that of other 
 historians, inasmuch as they always contented them- 
 selves with stating facts, leaving it to their readers 
 to draw conclusions. 
 
 Whilst engaged on this book Jules and Edmond's 
 only relaxation was taking long walks in the Paris 
 suburbs, and occasionally receiving the visit of some 
 friend who brought them news of what the w'orld 
 was doing. 
 
 Among those whom they saw most frequently was 
 Celestin de Nanteuil, the leading illustrator of 
 the day, an intimate of Victor Hugo, Gautier, and 
 Dumas, whose works were in many cases illustrated 
 by him. As a lithographer he was unequalled, and 
 like most French artists he possessed to a high 
 degree the gift of conversation. 
 
 It was in the course of a visit to the Rue Saint 
 Georges that de Nanteuil told the de Goncourts 
 of the strange mental condition into which had 
 fallen their common friend, the brilliant Gerard de 
 ^ erval. " Celestin de Nanteuil tells us," thev write in 
 their diary, " that Gerard de Nerval came back from 
 Italy absolutely penniless, but bringing with him 
 four thousand francs' worth of marble mantelpieces.
 
 THE GONCOURTS' FIRST HISTORICAL WORK 67 
 
 Also that in the penury of his later years he has re- 
 tained so marked a taste for luxurious surroundings 
 that he makes himself cravat pins out of gilt paper ! " 
 
 Whilst working steadily on their social history 
 of the Revolution the brothers found time to also 
 publish a booklet, La Revolution dans les Mceurs, of 
 which the preface consists of the pithy sentence, 
 "Society should fear, not her enemies, but herself," 
 and in it the two brothers compare the 1 8th century 
 and their own time greatly to the disadvantage of 
 the latter. 
 
 Early in the winter of 1854 the de Goncourts had 
 the pleasure of seeing the book, which had cost them 
 so much labour, time, and efibrt, very favourably 
 received by the critics. In this, their first serious 
 excursion into the domain of history, they had made 
 it their object " to paint in vivid, simple colours the 
 France of i-^f^ to 1 800 ; " and it is characteristic of 
 V both the period with which they were dealing and 
 of themselves, that the first chapter of the book 
 described the salons of 1789, whilst in the last they 
 gave the history of Charles Henri Sanson, the public 
 executioner. 
 
 The following passage, in a letter written by Jules 
 to Aurelien Scholl, shows what followed on the 
 publication of the book: "When I tell you that 
 we are working, I am only alluding to the actual 
 labour of writing and proof-correcting : for as re- 
 gards other things, the endless visits, putting on of 
 white gloves, leaving of cards and volumes, the stair- 
 cases we have had to climb, and the assaults we
 
 68 EDMOND AND JULES UE GONCOURT 
 
 have made on the critics, causes lis to think that 
 we possess the activity of two Napoleons. ... I am 
 goin<^ to speak to you of our book, knowing that 
 you will kindly allow us to talk shojy. Well, every- 
 thing is going as it should do. All along the line 
 articles have been promised us. ... A very amiable 
 letter from Sainte-Beuve. A four-paged epistle from 
 M. de Eemusat. The promise of a long article in 
 the Journal des Dehats from INI. liarriere, who has 
 paid us a most flattering compliment ; he actually 
 thought before he saw us that we had been con- 
 temporaries of the great Revolution, for otherwise 
 he did not understand how we could have written 
 such a book ! A delicious article by Jules Lecomte 
 in L Independance, in which he recommends every 
 one to buy the volume, and concludes, * This work 
 should be found in every library.' " 
 
 Before beginning a companion work on the 
 social history of the Directoive,' the brothers made 
 an expedition to Bordeaux ; coming back from 
 the south in order to spend the month of August 
 at Saint-iVdresse, near Havre. In a letter to Ga- 
 varni, overflowing with boyish fun and light spirits, 
 the younger brother gives a lively account of their 
 holiday : — 
 
 ""We have been fortunate enough to meet a de- 
 lightful fellow Mho insisted on taking us as boarders 
 into his house on quite exceptional terms, that is 
 to say, for nothing ! We partake of succulent 
 dishes, use English knives and forks." (This in
 
 A LETTER FROM HAVRE 69 
 
 teasing allusion to Gavarni's well-known love of 
 English life.) 
 
 "The dinner service is English, the water-bottle 
 is English, and as for our host, he is ' vary geyitle- 
 man;' he has a little Scotch terrier, one of whose 
 ears sticks up, and one of whose ears sticks down, 
 a very si^ecimen of ^ Landseer dogs.' ... 
 
 " We spend some of our time in a very comfort- 
 able wooden hut, where there are to be found grogs, 
 benches, chairs, and hammocks, right in front of 
 the sea. Thus we have every opportunity of see- 
 ing our lady Ocean in all her smartest gowns, some- 
 times in her blue Sunday toilet, or again in her 
 white ball dress, the skirt of which is covered with 
 silver foam. It is very pleasant to watch all this 
 whilst Toby, the Scotch dog, employs his time 
 in catching flies, 
 
 " We stir up our sugar at the bottom of our 
 glasses, and we light our pipes. 
 
 " This is, my dear sir, the position of your two 
 litre hoit (little boys), who would much like to have 
 yon with them. Master Jean (Gavarni's son) would 
 find a pleasant play-fellow in the sea. . . . Think 
 that you can be at Havre in four hours, and then 
 here in five minutes ! Now what say you of tak- 
 ing forty-eight hours' rest, and coming to bid us 
 good-day, . . 
 
 " As for Edmond, he is what you have always 
 known him to be ; he tries to lure me out on to 
 the cliffs at night, in order that he may have a 
 chance of pushing me into the sea, partly because
 
 70 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 lie is jealous, and partly because he wishes to be 
 my heir. Tnit I look after myself. He also treads 
 on mv toes when he takes me out into society, and 
 tells the ladies that I am 'a bad job,' so that I may 
 have no luck with them. But you know what 
 he is like, so I shall say no more. . . . 
 
 " Ah ! We have bought in Havre a monkey the 
 size of my iist, but whose tail is as big as my arm : 
 an adorable little beast." Here follows the monkey's 
 portrait. " He is far prettier than this, but I will 
 leave this matter of taste to Jean. 
 
 " And now, sir, I have the honour to remain, 
 not forgetting to beg of you to acknowledge the 
 receipt of this letter as soon as possible, your very 
 humble and obedient 
 
 Jules de Go^x'OURT." 
 
 The autumn was spent by the de Goncourts com- 
 piling La Societe pendant le Directoire, a book 
 which, though perhaps less complete than its pre- 
 decessor, remains the best and most authoritative 
 work on the social life of the period it describes. 
 
 The volume was to appear at the end of March 
 1855, and Edmond and Jules, as was and is the 
 custom abroad, made their usual calls on friends and 
 critics. 
 
 " I found Janin, contrary to his usual custom, 
 quite excited by the attacks of the smaller papers. 
 He expatiated at length on the continuous abuse in 
 a little journal, Sans le Sou, signed by a certain 
 Ambriot, and observed wittily: 'Mon Dieu ! the
 
 ANOTHER HISTORICAL WORK 71 
 
 matter is very simple — there are only a certain 
 number of insults to be lavished every year, let us 
 say 20,000. Well ! in a constitutional Government 
 these are divided between the King, the Ministry, 
 &c. To-day there are the same amount of insults 
 to be distributed, and they can only be lavished 
 on two or three writers like myself.' " 
 
 " Monday, March 26th. — Onv Histoire cle la Societe 
 Fraiifaise ^9e?zc/a?z^ le Directoire appeared on Satur- 
 day. We went to-day to see old Barriere, who stood 
 us in such good stead with H Histoire de la Societe 
 Fran^aise pendant la Revolution. He came in 
 holding two or three sheets of papers in his hand 
 and said, * You are coming to seek an article ; 
 well, look here, it is already half written.' There- 
 upon he began to chat with us about the Revolution 
 of '89 and that of '48, telling us that on the 15th 
 of May, Madame Barriere, presiding at the examina- 
 tion of school-mistresses at the H6tel-de-Ville, had 
 just written on the black-board one of the difficulties 
 of the participle when a loud noise was heard, and 
 they cried out to her to run away ; — finally the 
 list of the Provisional Government was written up 
 just below her participle ! " 
 
 vShortly after the publication of their second book 
 the de Goncourts began their Wednesday receptions, 
 receptions which remained, till Jules' illness and 
 death, among the most delightful weekly parties in 
 Paris. Among their closest intimates was Aur^lien
 
 72 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 Sclioll, the brilliant journalist who had been with 
 them on the staff of the Paris, and whose later 
 fame has been made in the Figaro. He has been 
 described as one of those men who believe in 
 nothing, laugh at everything, and succeed in any- 
 thing. Shortly before the publication of their book 
 on the Directoir^e, the younger of the de Goncourts 
 wrote him the following letter : — 
 
 "My dear Fkiend, — I am writing to you on a 
 Wednesday, the day of our reception. If I have a 
 chat with you through the post, I shall regret your 
 absence this evening a little less that I otherwise 
 should have done. 
 
 "So you are in love! Pity yourself! In love! 
 Love, the only reasonable folly of which man can 
 boast, an unwritten comedy, of which the plot is 
 never unravelled — poetry innocent of rhyme. 
 
 " The devil take me ! You pity yourself ! In 
 love ! a fine state to be in ! 
 
 "Be easy. I will be as discreet as a confessor 
 who knows nothing. 
 
 "Apart from your being a lover, how am I to 
 consider you? Are you a man of letters? Are 
 you a journalist? Are you a Parisian? Are you 
 a Bordelais ? Do you hibernate winter as well as 
 summer in Bordeaux? Are you coming back to 
 us? When will the volume now going to press 
 appear? Shall you send it, or come and bring it 
 yourself? Your letters are as vague as Lamartine's 
 ' Lac ' ! I can get from them no precise details,
 
 JULES' OPINION OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES 73 
 
 no idea of what you are doing, no consolation for 
 your absence. 
 
 " We are both suffering physically, and have dis- 
 covered a terrible earnest of the infirmities awaiting 
 us in our old age ; added to this we are sick at heart, 
 and though we are trying to battle against discourage- 
 ment, yet from hour to hour we feel ourselves suc- 
 cumbing to its power. No one holds out a friendly 
 hand, the old and the mediocre reign supreme ; there 
 is no current, no movement : the sea of literature 
 is like a smooth lake : editors are a myth. The 
 stage is completely in the hands of noisome vaude- 
 ville — the public reading anything and everything 
 — Criticism is a midwife who only brings abortions 
 into the world : the smaller papers produce no new 
 writers, and the more important suppress the names 
 of the younger men ; enmity and lack of union 
 are felt to the highest degree in our republic of 
 letters ; one's allies are absurd, and one's struggles, 
 one's feverish excitement, one's wild desire for a 
 great future, in a word, all this emotional element 
 that we mingle with the intellectual serves no pur- 
 pose and leads to nothing. The result of all these 
 struggles is to strengthen us in our resolution to 
 make fewer concessions than ever, to hold our 
 standard higher than ever, and to pray louder than 
 ever to Saint Henri Heine. . . . 
 
 " And yet in the midst of all these annoyances 
 and these disappointments, we have accomplished 
 a certain amount of work. In a fortnight or three 
 weeks our Directoire will be finished. . . .
 
 74 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 " The newspapers still appear, the women go on 
 being pretty, the earth goes round, books still sell, 
 and the Academy has not yet ceased to be, but 
 we all know, dear Aurdlien, that all these things 
 only seem to occur ! 
 
 " Keep a little corner for us in your heart, be it 
 ever so full and inhabited. 
 
 "Jules de Goncourt." 
 
 About the same time to George Asseh'ne : — 
 
 "My dear Tourist, — I bought the day before 
 yesterday a very curious manuscript on the Fermiers 
 Generaux of the i8th century, those Mires who 
 knew how to carry off their wealth. In it I found 
 the following : ' The King, Louis XV., royally enter- 
 tained by Bouret, wished to express his thanks by 
 presenting him with a fine autograph written in his 
 best hand. Bouret ransacked the chateau, but did 
 not succeed in finding a drop of ink.' 
 
 "You are not Louis XV., and I, alas! am not 
 Bouret. I found some ink, but no proper paper. 
 So forgive me this untidy sheet. 
 
 " So you are coming and going, spending your 
 honeymoon in Switzerland, a land like unto a 
 splendid hostess, who, keeping open house, never 
 grows any older. As you journey the mountains 
 salute you, the streams hold converse with you, the 
 lakes smile upon you, just as they do in one of 
 Henri Heine's landscapes — all this is as it should 
 be. Scarce an ugly rumour reaches you from
 
 A DESCRIPTION OF MONTMARTRE 75 
 
 France, that world of lovely women, great actresses, 
 and old wine. After all this it would be somewhat 
 unkind not to think of Sainte-Beuve while you are 
 at Lausanne. I had always fancied that it was his 
 native place. You tell me that he was only pro- 
 fessor there, nay, he created the place. 
 
 "As for us, dear Asseline, we have just sent 
 our last sheet to press, and — this is quite between 
 ourselves — we are almost sure of having found a 
 publisher. Believe it if you can, I can scarcely 
 bring myself to do so. 
 
 " And then this very day I too have made an 
 excursion. You are exploring Switzerland, I have 
 discovered an unknown region peopled with villas 
 and swings, with green arbours and with laughter, 
 a stretch of country where the air is keen, where 
 the trees shoot forth, and the grass peeps out of 
 the ground, where the sand is as fine and soft 
 as a carpet. A mountain, at least eight storeys 
 high, from which can be seen an ocean of gold, 
 rubies, topaz, and misty diamonds, the whole bear- 
 ing a certain resemblance to a distant city. The 
 natives call the place Montmartre. Whilst up 
 there I drank to the health of my sick heart in a 
 bottle of wine which seemed to me the best in the 
 world. The table was, oh, so dirty, but the sun 
 w'as shining, oh so brightly. 
 
 " So you are starting for Venice, you lucky 
 fellow ! By the way, are you sure Venice exists ? 
 Perhaps it is merely a city of dreams built up to 
 form a background for our dramas. Victor Hugo
 
 ^6 EDMONI) AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 dug tlie Orfano Canal, and lionchardy must have 
 invented the Council of Ten. Just look into the 
 matter and make sure of Venice. 
 
 " Literature continues to be like Bdboquct — that 
 is, in a bog — and we both continue to be your 
 friends. . Jules de Goncoukt. 
 
 «' P.S.— AMiat do you think of Berne ? " 
 
 To a Critic. 
 
 " Tuesday, April 2yJ, 1855. 
 
 " Yes certainly, dear sir, we will present our- 
 selves on Saturday to drink to the health of Dante, 
 and I have every reason to suppose that with the 
 aid of Lamcnnais and your preface, . . . his immor- 
 tality will be all the more firmly established. Rest 
 assured that we shall bring appetites worthy of 
 Ugolino. 
 
 "By the way, what a capital idea you had there ! 
 Why shouldn't one christen a book as one does a 
 son? 
 
 " I wish to add how much we are indebted to you 
 for bearing us so constantly in your mind. Our 
 pen owes you much, I should like to assure you 
 that it hopes to pay its debt and prove to you the 
 gratitude of its two masters. 
 
 "J. DE GONCOUPvT." 
 
 Before undertaking another book, the de Gon- 
 courts brought out in pamphlet form their lengthy
 
 SOME RECOLLECTIONS BY GAVARNI 77 
 
 ^criticism of the Salon of 1855, and during the spring 
 and summer they saw a great deal of Gavarni, and 
 many are the references in the diary to him and to 
 his stories of past people and things. " Gavarni 
 was telling us that the first time he saw Balzac 
 was in the office of Girardin's Mode. He saw a 
 round little man with handsome black eyes, turned- 
 up nose, somewhat stooping figure, talking much 
 and loudly, and whom he took for a publisher's 
 clerk. 
 
 " Gavarni also added that Balzac's figure made 
 a straight line from the neck to the heel, only 
 broken by the bend of his calves ; as for the 
 novelist's front profile it was absolutely that of an 
 ace of spades. . . ." 
 
 A day or two later, " Gavarni told us about the 
 salon of the Duchesse d'Abrantes, where he at one 
 time went constantly. All sorts of people met 
 there. One day he saw the Admiral, Sidney Smith, 
 go down on one knee to kiss the hand of the 
 Duchesse. The latter was a very stout woman, with 
 the voice of a fishwife, but with a good carriage and 
 fine manners. Madame Regnault de Saint-Jean- 
 d'Angely, the Duchesse de Breant, &c., a whole 
 battalion of old women, bearing, however, the traces 
 of former beauty, were to be seen there. One day 
 Gavarni met a little woman of stout and common 
 appearance, and, to use his own expression, ' reek- 
 ing of the small bourgeoisie.' He asked who it 
 w^as. ' Madame R^camier,' was the answer." 
 
 Such stories must have diminished the already
 
 78 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 slight stock of illusions cherished by the two sen- 
 sitive brothers, who seem nevertheless to have 
 possessed the singular power of extracting from 
 their friends and acquaintances more painful truths 
 than pleasant falsehoods ; even the wily Janin could 
 not keep himself from confiding to them, " Do you 
 know why I have lasted twenty years ? Simply 
 because I change my opinions every fortnight. If 
 I were always saying the same thing my feuilleton 
 would lose all its flavour, my readers would no 
 longer be eager to see what I write." 
 
 Small wonder that about this time the de Gon- 
 courts note in their diary: "There remains to be 
 expiftssed in literature the melancholy which has 
 come over modern France, ... a melancholy not 
 without its soothing side and touch of smiling 
 irony. The melancholy of Hamlet, of Lara, of 
 Werther, belongs to more autumnal nations than 
 ours. . . ." 
 
 Again — 
 
 "Every four or five hundred years a wave of 
 savagery has to sweep over the world to revivify it, 
 otherwise civilisation would destroy it. In old days 
 when a nation had become highly intellectual and 
 anaemic, from the North would come hordes of six- 
 foot-high barbarians who remoulded the race. Now 
 Europe cannot boast of any barbarians, but in fifty 
 years the same task will be accomplished by the 
 workmen. They will call it the social revolu- 
 tion. . . ." 
 
 In the autumn Edmond and Jules accepted an
 
 JULES' LETTER TO LOUIS PASSY 79 
 
 invitation from the Passys, to spend a month in the 
 old chateau at Gisors. Jules writes to Louis Passy : 
 
 "September 9, 1855. 
 
 " Firstly, your book is bound ! I have not yet 
 got it, but I have seen it, and I am expecting it 
 every day. I will bring it to you. 
 
 " Secondly, I have only untrustworthy informa- 
 tion so far, about the republication of Corneille- 
 Taschereau. The general opinion seems to be that 
 it will contain little or nothing that is new in the 
 shape of documents. It is expected to come out any 
 .day; indeed, it is announced, in the latest Jannet 
 catalogue, as having already appeared. I need scarcely 
 say that if it comes out before the i8th, we will 
 make our appearance at your home together. 
 
 " You see we are people who keep our word : we 
 threatened to come, and now we are coming. Many 
 thanks for receiving us, but we hope you will not 
 put yourself out. Pray do not build a gallery of 
 Apollo. You can have no idea of the joy with 
 which I am looking forward to reviving old 
 memories. What happy days these were ! What 
 games ! what pleasure parties ! I fear those years 
 cannot be lived over again. . . . Well, we start on 
 the 1 8th at one o'clock. . . . Edmond has a fiendish 
 cold, and my cheek is swollen to the size of a 
 pumpkin ; toothache is an unpleasant friend, and I 
 have just renewed its acquaintance. ... 
 
 " Remember us both kindly to your father and 
 mother. ..."
 
 So EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 EdDiond and Jules, especially the latter, seem to 
 have greatly enjoyed the return to the old house, 
 where they had once spent so happy a holiday with 
 their mother ; and when back in the Hue Saint 
 Georges, preparing for the Italian journey on which 
 they had so long set their hearts, Jules writes to 
 Aurelien Scholl : — 
 
 " We have just returned from a delightful 
 chfitcau, a bourgeois country house which con- 
 tains many of the memories and all the joys 
 of my childhood. We spent a bright and happy 
 fortnight in the loveliest country in the world, 
 indulging in long intimate talks, burrowing in old 
 books, free as air, surrounded by youth, gaiety, and 
 beauty. . . . 
 
 " Are you coming this month ? Next month 
 you run the risk of finding your friends flown 
 from the Rue Saint Georges. Yes, yes, they are 
 really going off this time. They are going be- 
 cause they are bored, because their country is 
 getting on their nerves, because they are seized 
 with a cross - grained melancholy, and because 
 they feel the need of breaking with their gutters 
 and their Paris for five or six months. It is 
 no use good old folk telling us that we shall 
 find brigands and cholera in Italy : for my part, 
 I believe those two bugbears are merely invented 
 by the newspapers to take the place of the great 
 sea-serpent. 
 
 " We drink to Chance ! the only god who 
 workcth miracles. ...
 
 JULES' LETTER TO LOUIS PASSY 8i 
 
 "Our ' Legendes' are going to press. I have 
 corrected the first proof sheet to-night. 
 
 " And also during the last month or more we 
 have been working slowly at a little thing three 
 times as long as La Lorette, and which will be 
 called, if it please God, Les Actrices. . . ." 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER YI 
 
 The de Goncourts' Italian journey — Jules' letters from Venice, Parma, 
 Pisa, and Rome— The brothers' return to Paris — A model mistress 
 described — A visit to Montalembert— Autumn at Gisors— The 
 original of Renee Maupe'rin — Sophie Arnould — How Thiers spent 
 his evenings as a young man — The gradual loosening of family ties 
 — Theopliile Gautier's methods of work, as described by himself. 
 
 On the 6th of November is inscribed in the diary 
 these three words, " Departure for Italy." Of the 
 six months' travel which followed there is no record 
 save a few letters from Jules, and a number of 
 extracts from the brothers' note-books, extracts abso- 
 lutely impersonal, but giving their first impression 
 of Italian art. What they thought of Venice is 
 described in a letter to George Duplessis, dated the 
 8th December 1855: — 
 
 "My dear Friend, — You are surrounded by 
 Canaletto's paintings. During the last eight days 
 I have been living amid his etchings. We can 
 now assert that there is really a corner of the world 
 where omnibuses go on the water, which contains 
 numberless Paul Yeroneses, where the horse is a 
 myth, the gondola a fact, and the Council of Ten 
 an historical truth. A splendid sun, a Swiss watch- 
 maker's tahle-cVhdte, three windows, which from 
 
 82
 
 THE BROTHERS' ITALIAN TOUR 83 
 
 morning to evening rejoice my eyes with glimpses 
 of splendid landscapes by Ziem, my pipe, some 
 Turkish tobacco, some Cyprus wine, a good digestion, 
 thoughts as bright as the Lido ; all this makes us 
 as happy and as lazy as lizards. . . . Listen ! I invite 
 you to come and drink two glasses of Sauterne 
 on the ist of May, Rue Saint Georges. I will then 
 tell you volumes — so I do not write them now. 
 
 " We both beg of you to indite us four long pages 
 between now and the 25th of December, addressed 
 Florence, Poste Restante. Tell us if there still 
 exists a Paris and Parisians, fools who write books, 
 idiots who read them, and those still more foolish 
 who talk about them ?...." 
 
 Three weeks later, from Parma, he writes to 
 Gavarni, who was known to have a prejudice 
 against Venice : — 
 
 "I swear to you, by the way in which man is 
 being constantly exploited, that I could neither write 
 to you from Como, nor from Venice the beautiful. 
 . . . But to-day, my friend, I am in a town which 
 has never served as background to a melodrama, 
 and Avhich figures in no opera — an honest provin- 
 cial town, innocent of gondolas and of romance, 
 a town where English tourists may be counted on 
 one's fingers. ... I feel I can write to you bravely. 
 
 " Ah ! Gavarni, there is no chance of my be- 
 coming Duke of Parma, and more's the pity ! A 
 state no larger than a table-cloth, a capital boasting, 
 'tis true, of more than one street, a theatre with a
 
 84 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 repertory, a Government possessing four Cabinet 
 ministers, and I forgot, an army which could easily 
 perform its manoeuvres on a table ! Can you imagine 
 a more delightful social position ? To be king 
 without all the world watching you, to govern with- 
 out being obliged to read a newspaper ! . . . I have 
 often wondered how I could tear you away from 
 Auteuil, now I know ; I would appoint you my 
 Minister of Agriculture ; with half of my state you 
 could make a game of ball, with the other a game 
 of bowls, with the rest a labyrinth. . . ." 
 
 To George Duplessis. 
 
 "Pisa, February 9, 1859. 
 
 " Well, my dear fellow, I spend my time arriving, 
 seeing what there is to be seen, and leaving. This 
 is a country where the vegetation forms frescoes ! 
 Galleries ! Ah ! galleries where it is possible to walk 
 two hundred steps without falling across a daub, 
 and where there are handfuls of Kaphaels, Michael 
 Angelos by the bucketful, and Andrea del Sartos 
 by the square yard, to say nothing of cart-loads of 
 unknown geniuses ! Sculptures ! Ah ! my friend, re- 
 member that here at every quarter of a league are 
 mountains of Carrara, and tons of gold and silver 
 fashioned by Cellini. ... A wealth of lovely colour- 
 ing imprisoned in frames, wandering over ceilings, 
 brightening the walls. . . . 
 
 " In future I shall be able, with my back to the 
 chimney, to describe an Italian carnival. An Italian
 
 THE BROTHERS' ITALIAN TOUR 85 
 
 carnival can be described in two words — have you 
 read Shakspere? — Much Ado about Nothing. . . . 
 By the way, have you heard of the two children 
 whom we left in Paris, Les Actrices and La Voiture 
 de Masques ? Do you know if they are making their 
 way in the world : have they had their ears boxed by 
 the critics, or received some good resounding slaps 
 which will make the public turn round ? . . . " 
 
 The de Gon courts made a lengthy stay in Rome, 
 seeing something of the cosmopolitan world then 
 gathered there, and spending not a little of their 
 time with the Prix de Rome students. 
 
 They found pleasant rooms in the Via de San 
 Andrea del Frate, close to the Piazza del Spagna, 
 and Jules wrote home letters to the half-dozen 
 friends with whom he was always in constant 
 communication. 
 
 To Philipioe de Chennevieres. 
 
 " Rome, February 2 1 . 
 
 "... Well, dear friend, during the last three 
 months we have gone straight on, our eyes wide 
 open, our souls satisfied. 
 
 " Venice is Venice, the city of all cities. After 
 we had left the station, when we stepped down into 
 the gondola-omnibus, I much feared that I should 
 only see the scenery familiarised by Scribe's comic 
 operas : but the devil take me, I plunged straight 
 into the Shaksperian drama !
 
 86 EDAIOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 "Whilst in Florence we fell seriously, conscien- 
 tiously, and laboriously in love with the pre- 
 Raphaelites, the Giottos, the Gaddis, the Lippis, the 
 Botticellis, Pollaiolos, and Beato Angelicos. During 
 a month we paid them assiduous courtship, and 
 finally, through overmuch gazing, we constantly dis- 
 covered an original idea in a drapery, a new school 
 in a big toe, a system in the drawing of a cloud, and 
 a genius in the poorest and most simple painter of 
 the epoch. . . . Good-bye, I know nothing of what 
 is going on, I only read a paper when it snows. In 
 the name of our exile write to us, about anything 
 you like, but send us by post something of yourself, 
 and a good slice of Paris, some time during the next 
 
 fortnight. . 
 
 A iveek later to George Duplessis. 
 
 " My dear Friend, — You are the best and kind- 
 liest of news-givers, and with all our hearts we thank 
 you for telling us all that is going on in Paris. . . . 
 
 "Do you care to hear something of our travels? 
 Florence is the great museum of Italy, not the 
 museum of idlers, but the museum of workers, 
 painters, and thinkers. A walk through Florence 
 is a marvellous and unequalled journey through 
 Italian art, from its beginnings to its maturity. 
 We have seen much, searched much, and written 
 little. 
 
 " You would not thank me, I am sure, if I were 
 to describe to you an Italian carnival, which is, my
 
 THE BROTHERS' ITALIAN TOUR 87 
 
 dear fellow, the most puerile and innocent of 
 diversions. 
 
 " The Tower of Pisa still leans to one side, and 
 shows no sign of falling, being similar in this to 
 many governments. 
 
 " Sienna is a curious town, perched high above a 
 hollow plain, and studded with mediaeval castles, 
 ladder-like streets, bull-dogs who don't bite, and 
 beggars who ask for charity betwixt two bursts of 
 laughter. . . . 
 
 " By the way, have you noticed how the price 
 of autographs is going up. If this sort of thing 
 continues, people will soon be able to hold in a 
 pocket-book a hundred thousand francs' worth of 
 signatures. This is very annoying to historians who, 
 like ourselves, are not millionaires. Last Sunday we 
 dined with Schnetz at the Academy of France ; there 
 were there all our artistic young hopefuls (Prix de 
 Rome). They are nice lads, who learn to become 
 geniuses by smoking endless cigarettes and regrett- 
 ing Paris ! Alas ! we do the same. . . ." 
 
 The next day he indites a long epistle, containing 
 an animated description of an Italian carnival, to 
 Gavarni : — 
 
 "My dear Friend, — . . . Considering that you 
 make Paris believe herself to be Italy when you 
 draw the Carnival Opera Ball, I should be indeed 
 ungrateful if I did not send you a sketch from nature 
 of the real thing.
 
 88 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 "The scene, if you will allow it, shall be laid in 
 
 Florence . A street. The sun. Shouts fly by, 
 
 while wayfarers stop short ; masked figures come 
 and go ; one carriage, two carriages, three carriages, 
 a thousand carriages cover with dust, and pelt with 
 bouquets the pavements, balconies, and windows. 
 Horses, jockeys, gold and silver liveries, dozens of 
 blue, pink, yellow, black and red dominos pass by, 
 dancing, jumping, Hying. . . . 
 
 " And the masked balls. Veglioni 1 Can you 
 imagine a masked ball where your lady friends 
 escape unkind remark, where the Grand Duke of 
 Tuscany can bring his fourteen-year-old daughter, 
 where the dancers amuse themselves innocently, 
 where the curtains in the boxes have no cause to 
 blush, where one overhears ' Frederick, do dance 
 with your sister/ where the principal item in the 
 refreshment bill is coffee, and the only policeman 
 the ^Minister of Police ? . . . Listen, an Italian 
 masked ball is like unto the solemn En^iish hus- 
 band whom I saw carrying, in a red silk handerchief, 
 his wife's hired domino ! As for the Carnival, it 
 affords the populace the kind of amusement which 
 children find in going into the kitchen and putting 
 on a big apron. . . . 
 
 *' The affair lasts fifteen days, but do not imagine 
 that much feasting goes on. One evening I asked 
 the waiter in the Trattoria, where we dined each 
 evening, * Ah ! I suppose you remain open on the 
 nights when the balls take place ? ' ' Oh no, Signor, 
 we shut early, too many people would come.' . . ."
 
 RETURN TO PARIS 89 
 
 And dated the same day, a note to Anrelien 
 Scholl : — 
 
 " We go straight before us, seeing on either side 
 men, women, houses, palaces, churches, beggars, 
 paintings, sunhght, and statues. Alas ! my friend, 
 one goes travelling in order to have the pleasure of 
 returning home : the gutter of the Rue Saint Georges 
 is to us finer than the Tiber, and the pavement of 
 the Rue Lepelletier the best of Appian Ways. I 
 would willingly give a month of travels and impres- 
 sions for an hour's talk with you. . . ." 
 
 March finds them still in Rome, and on hearing 
 of Heine's death, Jules writes to Armand Baschet : 
 *' Henri Heine is dead, a great personality gone. 
 Better had the vault received all the mourners, 
 rather than him they mourned. As far as I can see 
 there are only dwarfs left to bend the bow of 
 Ulysses." 
 
 In May the brothers were once more installed in 
 the Rue Saint Georges, trying to pick up the threads 
 of their old life, at first scarce as successfully as 
 they had hoped. "Those from whom I expected 
 pleasant things," writes Jules |^in the diary shortly 
 after their return, " bore me as much as I bore my- 
 self. They are exactly what they were when I left 
 them. Nothing of the slightest interest seems to 
 have occurred to them. They have simply gone 
 on existing. What they tell me I already know. 
 They are absolutely unchanged ; they have the same
 
 90 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 waistcoats, the same mistresses, and the same work 
 to do in the world. They have achieved nothing 
 wonderful. . . . None of my friends have even 
 died ; I am not unhappy, I am worse than if I 
 were." 
 
 Even the literary Bohemia, in which they had 
 once so delighted, seemed altered, for they ob- 
 serve : — " When Murger wrote his Vie de Boheme, 
 he was far from suspecting that he was writing the 
 history of a portion of society which would become 
 a power at the end of five or six years ; yet this 
 has really come to pass. This self-advertising free- 
 masonry reigns and governs, barring the way to any 
 man who has pretensions to good birth. ' He is 
 an amateur' and with this word they damn him. 
 He may bring the folios of a Benedictine, the wit of 
 a Heine; yes, but that makes no difference, 'he is 
 an amateur,' and he will be declared an amateur 
 to the end of the chapter. . . . Without any one 
 seeing it, this triumph of Bohemia marks really the 
 domination of socialism in literature. . . . 
 
 " I have seen to-day the very model of mistresses. 
 Her lover is a consumptive young Englishman, and 
 she is so truly concerned about him that she stays 
 at home every evening in order to prevent him going 
 out, and shuts herself up with him, chatting, smoking 
 cigarettes, and reading to him. . . . Two or three 
 Englishmen and Germans frequent the house ;- they 
 bring their pipes, together with half-a-dozen liegelian 
 ideas, and a profound contempt for all French politics, 
 which to them seem sentimental. The lady of the
 
 A CALL ON DE MONTALEMBERT 91 
 
 house goes out as little during the day as during the 
 evening. She has retained even in Paris the sedentary 
 habits of the Italian woman, and to occupy herself, 
 when she discovers a novel in the Constitutionnel 
 which will not go on to twenty-four volumes, she 
 takes and translates it into pure Tuscan for her own 
 private benefit. 
 
 " It is a charming house, though somewhat en- 
 cumbered with portraits of friends and relations. 
 The little parlour might be called the Temple of 
 Friendship. There is only one portrait that con- 
 tains any element of interest from the moral point 
 of view^ ; it is that of the mistress, painted by her 
 lover's mother." 
 
 In June they made the acquaintance of Monta- 
 lembert, who had been much struck by the de 
 Goncourts' historical researches. 
 
 "Rue du Bac. — We went through two or three 
 courtyards, and then came on a vast dwelling 
 situated in a quiet and secluded spot, where there 
 is fresh air, corners of verdure, and a great piece 
 of sky. A door, behind which was heard during 
 some seconds the sound of footsteps before it 
 opened, then a servant out of livery. We were 
 shown into a drawing-room, with ebony furniture 
 covered with red velvet, and presenting the appear- 
 ance of a thoroughly bourgeois interior ; yet never- 
 theless, above the piano, hung a copy of Perugino's 
 ' Marriage of the Virgin,' and opposite a Bruges 
 carving. 
 ' " ' Messieurs, will you come into my study ? '
 
 92 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 " Books everywhere, tiny pictures on both sides 
 of the mantelshelf, and hung on the gilt edge of 
 the mirror the miniature portrait of a nun. 
 
 " ' Oh ! ' observed our host, ' that is a fancy dress 
 portrait ; yes, a lady of my family played the part 
 of a nun, and had a fancy to be painted in her 
 dress. . . . My family adore private theatricals ; ' 
 and he took down from the book-shelves a volume 
 entitled ' Dramatic Works of the Count de Monta- 
 lembert, acted in the Theatre at Montalembert.' 
 . . . 'Your picture of old Paris interested me 
 deeply. It is very curious. I wrote to you. Yes. 
 Your vivacity of style led you astray ! The Academy 
 is a lady who does not like such things. You 
 know I agree with you, and not with her. It is 
 very curious to read about these old houses in your 
 book. I remember when we came back after the 
 great emigration we found a horse turning a mill- 
 stone in the theatre of our town house.' . . . 
 
 " If only you had been able to collect provincial 
 oral traditions. Alas ! soon they will be utterly 
 lost. In the first chapter of his Paysaiis, M. de 
 Balzac drew a picture of the peasantry produced by 
 the Revolution. It is not a flattering portrait, but 
 so true. I come from Morvan, and I said to my- 
 self, ' He must have been there.' . . . 
 
 " M. de Montalembert has long, straight, grey 
 hair, a full face, the old drawn features possessed 
 by some children ; he has a sleepy smile, his eyes 
 are deep but lacking in lustre, a nasal voice, 
 quiet restful amiability, and a feminine sweetness
 
 THE COLLECTION OF M. FOSSE D'ARCOSSE 93 
 
 of manner, which is shown in the way he shakes 
 hands. ..." 
 
 The de Goncourts had not left their love of the 
 eighteenth century behind them in Italy, and they 
 spent a delightful day at Versailles, going through 
 M. Fosse d'Arcosse's autographic and historical col- 
 lections. "The walls were hidden by cupboards, glass 
 cases, pictures, frescoes, hric-a-hrac, and historical 
 relics. Here was Louis XVI. 's hammer, forged by 
 his own royal hands, the shoe-buckles of Louis XV., 
 the hunting knife of Charles II., an order for fifteen 
 hundred francs signed Philippe Egalite. . . . 
 
 "Hearing a name pronounced by one of us, M. 
 Fosse d'Arcosse, a tall, bony old man, while turning 
 over a bundle of papers exclaimed, ' Yes, I shall end 
 by finding it, there were two branches of the family, 
 and they boasted of a strange peculiarity. Each of 
 these branches possessed a fortune of a hundred 
 thousand francs in the reign of Louis XIV., the one 
 branch placed their money in land, and now possess 
 four hundred thousand francs, the other invested in 
 government securities, and what with reductions and 
 bankruptcies, their fortune has become reduced to 
 five hundred and sixty francs ! ' " . . . 
 
 Lavellee told us that Feuillet de Conches the 
 other day showed the Emperor and Empress some 
 letters of INIarie Antoinette, and that Feuillet was 
 quite surprised to hear the Emperor speak ; he said 
 apropos of the letters, " When one is good, one 
 seems a coward ; in order to be thought courageous 
 one has to be wicked." . . .
 
 94 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 The brothers seem to have been immensely im- 
 pressed with the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. 
 Writing of him they observe : " A new literature, the 
 literature of the twentieth century, delighting in the 
 miraculous, the scientific, the fabulation by A. +B., 
 a literature which is at the same time crazy and 
 mathematical, Zadig turned magistrate, Cyrano de 
 Bergerac a pupil of Arago. , Objects playing a 
 greater part than human beings, and love, love 
 already pushed somewhat on one side in favour of 
 money by Balzac, the emotions giving way to other 
 sources of interest ; in a word, the novel of the 
 future will be expected to tell the story of the brain 
 rather than of the heart of humanity. . . . 
 
 " A day or two ago the mother of our friend 
 Pouthier, whilst reproaching him because he had 
 nothing to do, no prospect of a career, and no 
 means of earning a livelihood, brought her maternal 
 sermon to a close by this admirable phrase, ' Why, 
 at your age, / was already a mother !'..." 
 
 Edmond and Jules spent the month of August 
 with their cousin at the Chateau de Croissy, rest- 
 inir, and workins^r between whiles on their new 
 historical study. 
 
 "You ask us what we are doing?" writes 
 the younger brother to Aurelien Scholl, then in 
 Belgium. "We are sitting up late, making re- 
 searches, and resuscitating dead men and women 
 with whom we feel on the best of terms ; we are 
 striving to overtake the past ; two-thirds of our 
 volume is already written . . . plenty of ' copy '
 
 THE ORIGINAL OF " RENEE MAUPERIN " 95 
 
 in the drawer, plenty of plans in the far horizon, 
 our hearts empty of care and free as the wind. . . . 
 
 "We are in the country, I don't quite know 
 why ! I asked what month we were in, some one 
 said September, and so off we went. ... I should 
 not care to live in a chateau unless I had 600,000 
 fr. (^24,000) a year ; then, all Paris should come 
 to see me ; I would edit and publish my own 
 newspaper, receive flocks of friends, and instal a 
 gas-jet under each leaf. . . . 
 
 " The gardener yesterday gave us a bad melon. 
 To-morrow I shall put on a pair of gloves, and go 
 and call on a lady-neighbour. Just now Edmond 
 is reading Balzac ; he is seated between a green 
 bench and a bed of geraniums — the birds are sing- 
 ing, I conclude from habit — the shadows fall from 
 the trees and lie down on the grass — the dogs 
 think of nothing, but I think of you. . . ." 
 
 They received an invitation to Gisors, and Jules 
 writes to Louis Passy : — " Only the time to get our 
 two dozen shirts washed, and then Rose (our ser- 
 vant) declares that we shall be ready. . . ." 
 
 It was durin"- this visit that the de Goncourts 
 renewed acquaintance with one of their old play- 
 fellows, a charming, high-spirited girl from whom 
 the brothers, eighteen years later, drew the heroine 
 in their truthful and admirable study of French 
 girlhood, Renee MauiJerin. 
 
 A pencil sketch of this young lady, drawn by 
 Jules, is now in the possession of M. Edmond 
 de Goncourt, and the circumstance which led to
 
 96 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 the portrait being taken inspired one of the most 
 striking pages in the novel. 
 
 But, ^vitho^t any thought of gathering literary 
 material, Jules whilst at Gisors showed the deep 
 impression produced on him by his fellow-guest : 
 
 " Mademoiselle combines the cordiality and 
 
 loyalty of a man with the charm of a young girl ; 
 full of thoughtful sense, with a mind and intellect 
 lifted, one knows not how, above the bourgeois 
 surroundings in which she was nurtured, she is full 
 of aspirations towards moral greatness, devotion to 
 others, and self-sacrifice. She has a keen desire for 
 what is most delicate in the region of intelligence 
 and art, and an utter scorn for all which usually 
 fills the minds and conversations of women. 
 
 " She is inspired at first sight with antipathies 
 and strong likings. Smiling with a delicious com- 
 plicity at those who understand her, you see the 
 longest of faces when she is assailed by such bores 
 as young men who love making quotations. She 
 is ill at ease when dealing with the artificial side 
 of society, and says out everything just as it comes 
 into her head, and has a peculiar understanding 
 of studio slang. . . . She is outwardly gay ; but 
 her brightness proceeds from a soul in whose 
 melancholy depths float visions of children's graves, 
 and echoes of Chopin's Funeral INlarch. She is 
 passionately devoted to riding and driving, but 
 she turns faint at the sight of a drop of blood, 
 has a childish horror of unlucky Friday, of the 
 number thirteen, and is a prey to all the superstition
 
 HISTORICAL RESEARCHES 97 
 
 and human weaknesses which are pleasing in a 
 woman ; weaknesses combined with rare coquetries ; 
 for instance, she loves to show her foot — the tiniest 
 foot in the world — always neatly shod in a high- 
 heeled, sandalled shoe. 
 
 " She is ill-judged and belittled by w^omen, and 
 by those small-minded folk who have a horror of an 
 open nature. ..." 
 
 And writing to Aurelien Scholl, in response to a 
 query from his friend as to where they had just been, 
 he says : — " We have been spending twenty happy 
 quiet days, without one dull hour, in a large house, 
 royally comfortable, where the even tenor of life 
 goes on without trouble or disturbance ; where the 
 old men make you feel full of sap, where there 
 is a young girl who unites the frankness of a boy, 
 with every feminine charm, and who is, after your- 
 self, the dearest of our friends. . . ." 
 
 In connection with their social history of the 
 Revolution, Messieurs de Goncourt had constant 
 occasion and opportunity for making extracts from 
 family archives, and hitherto unpublished private 
 letters and diaries ; they were also, apart from their 
 literary work, ardent autograph collectors, and this 
 caused them to be in constant communication with 
 Parisian dealers. Having always wished to pursue 
 their researches into what may be called the secret 
 social history of the eighteenth century, a lucky 
 chance made them, during the summer of 1856, the 
 possessors of a number of documents concerning 
 Sophie Arnould. It came about in the following 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 98 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 manner : one day they were offered by Charavay, the 
 famous autograph dealer, a bundle of old papers, 
 whose only interest was said to lie in the period to 
 which they referred. Whilst looking over their pur- 
 chase the brothers found what purported to be the 
 copy of some hitherto unpublished memoirs of the 
 great actress, containing twenty-four of her letters 
 to Monsieur and Madame Belangcr (her steward 
 and his wife), written about the year 1800, when 
 Mademoiselle Arnould had retired from the stage, 
 and was about fifty-six years of age. 
 
 After taking considerable trouble to establish 
 the authenticity of their precious find. Messieurs de 
 Goncourt decided to publish the letters, with a 
 short biography of the writer. The volume was 
 brought out by Poulet Malassis, and forms the first 
 of the long series of valuable eighteenth century 
 documents, which, but for Edmond and Jules de 
 Goncourt's tireless industry and enthusiasm, might 
 have remained for ever buried in state records 
 and family archives. 
 
 But though the autumn of 1856 was given over 
 to hard work, for, in addition to Sophie Arnould^ 
 Messieurs de Goncourt were gathering together 
 the material for the volume entitled Portraits 
 Intimes du XVIIT'"' Siecle, the younger brother 
 found time to make a curious expedition to the 
 haunts of a famous fortune-teller, and in the diary 
 he wrote an amusing account of his experiences : — 
 " He lives in the Rue Fontaine Saint Georges. . . . 
 An old white-haired woman showed me into a dining-
 
 JULES' VISIT TO A FORTUNE-TELLER 99 
 
 room, where were framed, on a black background, 
 numberless hands cut out on white paper, and 
 covered with lines, dots, and annotations, written in 
 ink. There hung the hand of Robespierre, the 
 hands of the Emperor and of the Empress, the hand 
 of Monseigneur Affre, and last, not least, the hand 
 of Madame de Pompadour, 
 
 "A door opened, and a man, with a big square 
 head, large features, huge moustache, not unlike 
 the portraits of Frederick Soulie, appeared. . . . He 
 was attired in a black velvet dressing-gown, with the 
 large falling sleeves of an astrologer. The room was 
 in darkness, or nearly so ; what light there was came 
 from above through a stained glass window, and 
 threw strange shadows in the gloom, through which 
 could be vaguely seen a white owl. A table, on 
 which a single ray of daylight fell as in E-embrandt's 
 paintings, separated me from the fortune-teller. 
 ' In which month were you born ? ' 
 
 " ' How old are you ? ' 
 ' Which flower do you prefer ? ' 
 
 " ' What is your favourite animal ? ' 
 
 ■'Whilst saying all this he shuffled an enormous 
 pack of cards, each card a foot high, and bearing 
 a life episode on its surface ; . • . and all these alle- 
 gorical drawings, though drawn by an ignorant hand, 
 were fantastically burlesque, monstrously ugly, , . . 
 and with something of the savage and ghastly 
 figurations of heathen idols imagined by primitive 
 nations. 
 
 " With an impressive gesture the sorcerer began
 
 loo EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 speaking, and in a vulgar, uneducated voice, rolled 
 off during half-an-hour the romantic future which lay 
 before me. Still the individual is no fool, he spoke 
 without hesitation, and without stopping to choose his 
 words. . . . He said but one thing which impressed 
 me, * As for you, you who have nothing to be afraid 
 of from the thrust of a gword, or from a pistol shot, 
 have everything to fear from the stroke of a pen ! ' " 
 
 The brothers also formed that autumn many 
 new ties. 
 
 '' Decemher lo. — Called on Barriere of the 
 Debats. . . . The old man is quite a well of historical 
 anecdotes. He told us that he had seen the Duthc 
 when he was quite a child. Barriere's father was 
 jeweller to the Queen, and one day a fine lady came 
 in to choose some ornaments. Barriere's mother, a 
 very pretty woman, but, like every pretty woman, 
 somewhat unwilling to admit beauty in others, 
 asked what he thought of the lady, and when he 
 admitted that he had thought her very attractive, 
 ' Oh, but her neck is too long,' cried Mme. Barriere. 
 The lady in question was Mademoiselle Duthe. 
 
 "The conversation turned on Thiers, and Barriere 
 told a curious story about that statesman. ' When 
 Thiers was only twenty-three, he often came to 
 dinner in my little flat of the Hue de Condd.' 
 Barriere had kept a set of tin soldiers, which had 
 belonged to him when a child ; and after dinner 
 the two men used both to set them up on the top 
 of a table, and Thiers would amuse himself during
 
 GAVARNIANA lor 
 
 the whole evening by knocking down the soldiers 
 with bread bnllets. This was a prelude to his 
 descriptions of the battles of the First Empire. 
 
 " ' But soon,' added Barriere, ' the small fiat of a 
 humble man of letters could no longer contain the 
 rising politician.' . . . 
 
 " Gavarni leads more the life of a recluse than 
 ever. You find nobody now in the red-tiled garret 
 where he works. He is no longer a man, he is a 
 pure abstraction, and nothing, absolutely nothing, 
 seems to link him to humanity. When you mention 
 the names of his acquaintances you feel that they 
 are already buried under clods of forgetfulness. He 
 scarcely remembers them, and if he alludes to any 
 of them, you see by his far-off look that he is 
 searching the by-ways of his memory. 
 
 " This evening, some chance remark called up a 
 hidden recollection, and he drew us a grotesque 
 picture of Daumier, the great artist who was more 
 indifferent to the success of his life work than 
 was any one he had ever met. He described the 
 vast room, where round a cast-iron stove, throwing 
 out a white heat, a group of men sat on the ground, 
 each with his pint measure. . . . 
 
 " Gavarni laughed heartily over an article of phre- 
 nological biography lately published about him, an 
 article in which, while allowing him the bump of 
 sensitiveness, they emphatically denied him that of 
 veneration. ' You see. Messieurs,' cried he, ' 'tis 
 cruel, but 'tis true, I haven't a ha'porth of vene- 
 ration ! ' "
 
 102 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 The last entry in the December of 1856 pnts on 
 record the significant fact that Edmond and Jules 
 de Goncourt had sold, to the Paris publisher Dentu, 
 their Portraits Intimes for the sum of three hundred 
 francs {£12), they having spent over the material 
 which went to compose the two volumes some 
 thousands of francs. Yet this was a distinct ad- 
 vance on their previous plan of publishing at their 
 own expense. 
 
 To Aurelien Scholl, who, in consequence of a 
 duel, had been condemned to a month's imprison- 
 ment, Jules writes on Christmas Eve : — "Last night 
 I dreamt that I had gone to join you, having been 
 given a month for having boxed the ears of an un- 
 known gentleman. I saw the door of the prison, a 
 group of our friends and your kindly greeting. How- 
 ever, I have boxed no one's ears, and, thank God, it 
 is you, dear fellow, who are coming to me. . . . 
 
 " It is difficult for me to say anything to you of 
 a consoling nature, for you are in prison, and I 
 am at liberty. I cannot even tell you a funny 
 story, for the sky is grey, and we have condemned 
 ourselves to remain indoors and work. 
 
 " Are you doing anything ? Do you find that 
 your imagination can trot up and down even behind 
 prison bars ? The hours must seem tortoises, and 
 old Time, bereft of his wings, sadly paralytic." 
 
 The year 1857 opened well for the two brothers, 
 and the publication of their book on the Eighteenth 
 Centuiy brought them many new friends and ap- 
 preciative readers.
 
 THEOPHILE GAUTIER DESCRIBED 103 
 
 Jules notes somewhat sadly the gradual disap- 
 pearance of old family ties. Instead of the many 
 duty calls he used once to pay on New Year's day, 
 only an uncle and an old cousin, Mademoiselle de 
 Courmont, remain ; and the brothers found the latter 
 vieille demoiselle awaiting their visit in what was 
 practically a workman's dwelling. " And yet," ex- 
 claimed Jules, " she is the granddaughter of a woman 
 who possessed three millions beside Charolais, and 
 the chateaux of Clichy and Bondy ; the silver dishes 
 on which this lady's roast game were brought to 
 table were so heavy that two footmen could scarcely 
 carry them. But all this wealth was turned into 
 paper money, and Elizabeth Lenoir, who formerly 
 went by the name of the silver heiress, and whom 
 Monsieur de Courmont married for her fortune, died 
 in a garret with nobody near her but an old dog, 
 and was buried in a pauper's grave. Our cousin 
 only inherited a small life annuity, and a vault in 
 the Montmartre Cemetery, which, being paid for in 
 advance, is her actual property." 
 
 Early in January the brothers met, in a news- 
 paper oihce, Theophile Gautier, " a heavy face and 
 weary expression, a sleepy physiognomy which 
 wakes up at intervals, and takes a part in what is 
 going on just in the same intermittent manner in 
 which a deaf man takes in words — with hallucina- 
 tions of hearing which makes him give his attention 
 to what is being said behind him when he is really 
 being addressed in front. . . . 
 
 "He repeated constantly the sentence, 'Form
 
 I04 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 always gives birth to thought,' and lingpred lovingly 
 on the phrase. Flaubert said it to him this morn- 
 ing, and he looks upon it as the formula of his 
 school, and wishes it could be engraven on all the 
 walls. Then he gave those round him an account 
 of how he spends his working days. ' I should 
 never wake up in the morning were it not that I 
 dream of Gargantuan repasts, and wake up hungry. 
 After breakfast I smoke. As I get up at half- 
 past seven, this brings me to eleven o'clock. Then 
 I drag forward an arm-chair, place on the table all 
 the instruments of torture, the paper, the pen, and 
 the ink ; I have always hated writing, it is so use- 
 less ! Then I begin to write solemnly, like a public 
 writer. ... I do not Mork quickly, but I never 
 stop, for I do not stay to choose my words ... or 
 think over what I am going to say. I take up my 
 pen and write. I am a man of letters, and should 
 know my business. When I am sitting in front of 
 paper and ink, I am like the clown on his trapeze. 
 And then I have my own system of syntax. I throw 
 my phrases up in the air, as if they were kittens, 
 and they always fall on their feet. It is very simple, 
 one need only liave good syntax. I would engage 
 to teach any one the art of writing. I might open 
 a class for teaching young people in twenty-five 
 lessons how to write leaders. Look, here is some 
 of my " copy : " you see there is not an erasure.' " 
 
 Th(jophile Gautier, with liis overwhelming per- 
 sonality, brilliant originality, and genius, played a 
 great part in the de Goncourts' life, and in their
 
 GAUTIER AS JOURNALIST 105 
 
 diary may be found the best and most living de- 
 scriptions of the author of Mademoiselle de Maupin, 
 but which throw a painful light on French jour- 
 nalism during the Empire. 
 
 Early in the winter of 1857, Flaubert's publica- 
 tion of Madame Bovary led to his being pursued 
 as having written a work contrary to public morals. 
 Thanks to his able counsel, M. Senard, he was 
 acquitted, but the trial made a profound impression 
 on his fellow-writers, especially on Gautier, who 
 when discussing the matter exclaimed, " I am 
 ashamed of my profession. For the sake of the 
 slender sum I earn, and without which I should 
 starve, I am forced to suppress at least the eighth 
 part of what I think, at the risk of being dragged 
 before the courts." 
 
 ^
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Year 1S57— Publication of Portraits Intimes du XVIII^'^ Sikle—Jjetteva 
 from Jules to Saint- Victor and Gavarni — Various conversations 
 with Flaubert, Feydeau, Gautier, Gav&vni—Hommes de Zettres — 
 Death of Gavarni's son Jean — Napoleon the Third's literary- 
 labours — Baudelaire — The year 1858— Passages from the diary — 
 Rachel's house described by Jules — Guys of the Illustrated 
 London News — Jules Lecomte. 
 
 " Mahch 16. — To-day appeared our volume of Por- 
 traits Intimes du XVIIP"' Siecle. Barriere scolds 
 us for wasting our talent on small and unimportant 
 subjects. What the public wants, he says, are solid 
 and compact works, in which may be recognised 
 figures often met with previously, and which con- 
 tain well-known stories. Anecdotes, which have 
 not yet received the sanction of time, are apt to 
 scare this same public ; documents, hitherto unpub- 
 lished, frigliten them ; a history of the Eighteenth 
 Century, as we understand it, slowly unravelled 
 by means of a series of autograph letters and 
 documents, showing the various tendencies and 
 different sides of the epoch : an original, freshly 
 written history, differing from those which have 
 already appeared ; such a work will not bring us 
 
 in the twentieth part of what an ordinary com- 
 
 106
 
 PUBLICATION OF "PORTRAITS INTIMES " 107 
 
 pilation, in which we should have floundered 
 through miles of beaten and hackneyed ground, 
 would yield. ..." 
 
 The Portraits Intimes dii XVIir"'" Siecle is a 
 book mainly composed of original matter, and ex- 
 tracts from letters and diaries written by personages 
 of minor, though important, historical interest, joined 
 together by an almost invisible thread of narrative. 
 For instance, the volume contains a very interest- 
 ing and instructive memoir by the Marquis de 
 Calviere, a member of the Royal Household, on 
 the youth of Louis XV. ; the boy king portrayed 
 in his daily life, in his amusements, in his freaks 
 and sulks ; the man who did so much to bring 
 about the great Revolution, shown, so to speak, at 
 the source. 
 
 Saint- Victor, the critic of the Presse, wrote, 
 when the Portraits Intimes were first published, 
 an enthusiastic review of the book. Said he, " It 
 is a volume full of dreams and fantasies, and re- 
 sembles one of those delicately enamelled cabinets, 
 encrusted with medallions on which Time has set 
 his seal, and which have come down to us intact in 
 beauty and full of the romance of a past period. 
 The silver key is turned in the sculptured lock, and 
 a whole treasure is let free — the loves, the secrets, 
 the letters of great men, and epistles penned by fair 
 ladies full of unveiled passion, bearing the trace 
 of tears, and showing how the hands trembled as 
 they wrote." 
 
 The two young authors were greatly delighted,
 
 io8 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 and on the iith of May 1858, they wrote this note 
 to their critic : — 
 
 " My dear Saint- Victor, — We know not how to 
 thank you ; but we wish to tell you that we are 
 happy to be your debtors, proud that to all the 
 former links between us, to that sympathy of taste 
 and mental friendship, you have now added one of 
 the heart, which commands our gratitude. 
 
 "Edmond and Jules de Goncourt." 
 
 The Portraits Intimes were also noticed by 
 another well-known man of letters, M. de Lescure, 
 in the Gazette de France, and the volume went 
 through several editions, but the authors thoroughly 
 revised each monograph, and the later issues of the 
 book are much more complete. 
 
 ''March igth. — X. came to see us this morn- 
 ing. The woman he loves has written to tell him 
 that, weary of his tyrannical affection, she no longer 
 cares for him at all, and that in order to utterly 
 destroy any hope of a reconciliation, she gives him 
 to understand that she has taken another lover. 
 Hence tears, some fine verses written on the spur 
 of the moment, bursts of dull fury, and threats of 
 blows and duels. . . . 
 
 "... In the modern young man of letters 
 there is a curious combination of the literary and 
 dramatic element : his very existence seems full of 
 the incidents which went to compose the life of
 
 A LETTER FROM JULES TO GAVARNI 109 
 
 eighteenth century adventurers. His emotions are 
 always strained to the utmost, and he suffers the per- 
 petual martyrdom of a nervous organisation, alv^^ays 
 fatally attracted by all that causes him pain, and to 
 that which finally destroys his powers of thought by 
 day and his sleep by night." 
 
 During this winter, almost immediately after the 
 publication of their book, the elder brother had a 
 short illness, and during his convalescence he and 
 Jules amused themselves by ransacking the quays 
 and the Marche du Temple, in hopes of discovering 
 a set of old tapestries in keeping with a fine suit 
 of Beauvais furniture lately bought by them. At 
 last, after many pleasant but fruitless expeditions, 
 they came across what they had long looked for, a 
 fine piece of Gobelins. 
 
 AVith Gavarni the de Goncourts' intimacy 
 greatly increased about this time, and Jules con- 
 stantly cheered his old friend by amusing notes. 
 
 "Dear Sir and Fpjend, — Messrs. Edmond and 
 Jules, men of letters, having a great deal to do, and 
 no time during the whole blessed week to go and 
 see their dear Gavarni, invite him and his heir to 
 dine with them on Tuesday. Excuses not accepted. 
 We count upon you. 
 
 "This family gathering will be delightful; every 
 one will be merry, and the conversation will be 
 specially choice. The chandelier will not be 
 lighted, but on the other hand. Monsieur and
 
 no EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 Madame Leroy will lend the lustre of their pre- 
 sence. There will perhaps be some lobster ! This 
 is still doubtful ; but we are ready to make any 
 sacrifices in order to see once more our long lost 
 friend. . . . " 
 
 On the loth of April Jules puts on record in 
 the diary a curious conversation overheard at a 
 newspaper office. 
 
 " At five o'clock we met, at the office of L Artiste, 
 Gautier, Feydeau, and Flaubert ; Feydeau is chiefly 
 conspicuous for a self-infatuation and belief in his 
 work, so simple and obviously childish that one 
 cannot help being disarmed. Apropos of the publi- 
 cation of Les Saisons, of which a number is to appear 
 at each solstice, he said to Gautier, "I hope you 
 think it is a gem, because I shouldn't like to 
 dedicate anything to you that wasn't of the first 
 water ! " 
 
 Whereupon there arose a fierce and noisy dis- 
 cussion on the subject of metaphors. Massillon was 
 quoted, and the phrase, *' His opinions had no cause 
 to blush for his conduct," was passed by Flaubert and 
 Gautier ; but Lamartine's, " He delighted in riding 
 on horseback — that pedestal of Princes," was con- 
 demned by all present. 
 
 From metaphors they passed on to the question of 
 tautologies. Flaubert maintained they ought to be 
 avoided at all costs, even though you spend a week 
 in seeking a synonym. Then Flaubert and Feydeau, 
 with many gestures and much raising of voice.
 
 GAVARNIANA iii 
 
 told each other various little trade secrets, exposing, 
 with emphasis and earnestness, various possible and 
 impossible theories as to literary methods, and the 
 means by which a man may always attain the writing 
 of good prose. 
 
 In short, so much importance is given to the cloth- 
 ing, colouring, and texture of the idea, that the 
 thought about to be expressed becomes a mere peg 
 on which to hang sounding phrases. . . . 
 
 "April i6th. — Gavarni dropped in to lunch and 
 held forth : ' When women go anywhere they carry 
 little bits of work about with them, some crochet, 
 or a scrap of wool work. Well, I have invented 
 a very simple little instrument by which you can 
 find iyitegrals, and I always carry it about with 
 me ; it is very convenient : I am taking a walk, for 
 instance, after I leave your house — hey presto — I 
 find an integral — it is a fine thing to be in posses- 
 sion of a large number of integrals ; you never 
 know, the collection may sell very well after your 
 death.' . . . 
 
 " Then he went on to speak of the curious attrac- 
 tion he has always felt for subterranean galleries 
 leading into mountains, the openings of caves, and 
 those extinct volcanoes, in whose depths lie cradled 
 night and mystery. He has often gone down into 
 these places holding to a rope suspended from a 
 tree ; it was thus that he discovered on the 
 Pyrenees a magnificent stalactite grotto, which is 
 now constantly visited by tourists. But his curio-
 
 112 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 sity and imagination were roused by an opening 
 which is to be found on a plateau among the 
 mountains of Bagnieres, I believe it is called Le 
 Casque cle Leres. However many stones you throw 
 down this place you do not hear them fall. 
 '* Why," he asked, " has no one ever cared to be 
 let down in a basket ? It would be well worth the 
 trouble. There was some mystery there which 
 seemed to lure me on. I should like to have con- 
 cocted a story out of that black pot, showing how I 
 went down and found at the bottom an old sage 
 who knew everything, even the Promethean secret 
 of bringing the dead to life. His valet should 
 have been a Roman General, killed in some battle 
 in the vicinity, and to whom the sage had restored 
 the vital spark, only endowing him, however, with 
 the intelligence necessary for cleaning his labora- 
 tory. ..." 
 
 The following sentences give a vivid idea of 
 Jules de Goncourt's nature. 
 
 " I should like to have a room flooded with 
 sunshine, the furniture bathed in light, and hung 
 with old tapestries, whose colours should have faded 
 under a Southern sun. There I would dwell, full 
 of golden ideas, possessed of a warm heart, a mind 
 brimful of sunshine, and at peace. How strange 
 it is that as you grow old the sun becomes dear to 
 you, nay, almost necessary, and the dying ask that 
 the window may be opened in order that the god 
 of light may close their eyes. . . ."
 
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 "LES HOMMES DE LETTRES " 113 
 
 ''May 12. — Theophile Gautier told us to-day that 
 when he wished to write exceptionally well, he 
 always began his work in verse, because there was 
 a feeling of uncertainty in his mind respecting 
 prose, as to whether it would turn out a success ; 
 whereas, just as a medal is struck once for all, 
 verses, if good, come out in one piece ; but he 
 added that the exigencies of life had more than 
 once turned the stories which he had begun in 
 verse into prose. . . . 
 
 ^^ May 20. — What a grievously elaborate torture 
 one must undergo to keep up beauty. We heard 
 the process described by a woman in Society. 
 She gets up at half-past six, sits by the window 
 till half-past eight, in order that her complexion 
 may enjoy an air bath for an hour and a half; then 
 she takes an ordinary bath lasting an hour, and 
 after breakfast she lies down for a time, her face 
 isolated from all contact. . . ." 
 
 Although not published till three years later, 
 the brothers spent the early spring of 1857 in 
 writing the first portion of Les Homines de Lettres, 
 a painfully realistic study of the literary circles in 
 which they themselves were living. The story was 
 first written in what was destined to be one of 
 its ultimate forms, namely, as a comedy. 
 
 " . . . Our play, Hommes de Lettres, is nearly 
 finished ; building unstable castles in the air, we 
 tell each other that if it brings us in money, that 
 is, a great deal of money, we shall play ducks and 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 114 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 drakes with it, laugh at it, abuse it, waste it on 
 follies. We who believe that it is beyond the power 
 of money to procure a single sensation, or one drop 
 of happiness, should only experiment with money, 
 outdoing the fool in folly of spending, essaying the 
 limits of our originality between four walls, showing 
 the specific lightness of a large sum. . . ." 
 
 ''June I, — Nothing ever begins over again in 
 this world, and man should never desire a second 
 time what he has once found good. To-day, in Maire's 
 Restaurant, the Ecrevices Bordelaises were not a 
 success. Ah me ! about the year '50, in the days 
 when Maire was a common wine-seller, possessing 
 behind his zinc counter only one tiny room, where, 
 by dint of squeezing, you could get in six people, 
 and old Father Maire did his own waiting, the 
 food was served on real plate to those whose culi- 
 nary taste was worth consideration. I remember the 
 haricot mutton flavoured with mushroom, and a 
 certain dish of truffled macaroni, the delicacy of 
 which it is impossible to describe, washed down 
 with several bottles of that splendid minor Burgundy, 
 once in the cellar of Louis Philippe. . . . 
 
 " June 4. — To-day, at the Hotel Drouot, I saw the 
 first sale of photographs. Everything turns to black 
 in our days, and photography is the dusky garment 
 in which things clothe themselves. . . . 
 
 " June 7. — The conversation turned on the subject 
 of the Emperor's mistresses, on the Castiglione, and 
 the jealousy of the Empress. You all remember the
 
 THE DEATH OF JEAN GAVARNI 115 
 
 mot of Constance about the Emperor — ' If I had only 
 resisted, to-day I should have been an Empress ! ' . . , 
 ''June II. — If the public only knew how dearly 
 we pay for a little notoriety ; the insults, the out- 
 rageous calumnies, the sickness of body and mind 
 which befall us, then truly their envy would turn 
 to pity. ..." 
 
 Edmond and Jules spent the latter part of June 
 at Croissy, in the chateau which was so long in the 
 possession of a member of their family. There, work 
 and worry were forgotten, and the younger brother, 
 whose health had already begun to give way, men- 
 tions with delight the pleasure afforded him by the 
 great silent park, studded with the lime-trees for 
 which Seine-et-Oise is famous. 
 
 Their stay in the country was much saddened 
 by the death of their old friend Gavarni's little 
 son Jean, which occurred on the 17th of June, 
 wdthin a few days of the de Gon courts' departure 
 from Paris. " My friend," writes Jules on hearing 
 of the terrible blow which had struck the great 
 caricaturist, " we do not feel we can intrude on 
 your grief. We only press your hand : in a few 
 days we will come and see you. . . ." 
 
 ''July 5. — We have been to see poor Gavarni, 
 who lost his son Jean during our absence. We 
 found him stricken down with grief, and, according 
 to his own expression, ' having lost all courage for 
 doing or living.'
 
 ii6 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 " He told us that Andral had seen his son the 
 day hefore, but had thought his condition offered 
 no cause for alarm. 'In the morning,' continued 
 Gavarni, ' he suddenly fixed his eyes on mine, doubt- 
 less without seeing mc, eyes that were larger than 
 I had seen them, the pupil just like this,' and 
 he showed us the size on his thumb nail. ' I 
 took his hand, it was beginning to grow cold. A 
 great look of surprise came over his face, his hand 
 became icy, all was over. I wished to wear out 
 my grief. ... I did not leave this place, I could 
 never have returned.' After a moment's silence he 
 added, * I idolised that child. It was a mania, a 
 madness. I was always afraid. When I came home, 
 after getting out of my gondola, my eyes instinc- 
 tively went to the window, I was always dreading 
 some accident, expecting to see a crowd gathered — 
 I know not what. Ah ! yes, it was a mania. But it 
 has this good side to it, nothing now matters ; the 
 neighbours may scream themselves hoarse ; the 
 house may burn to the ground : I am absolutely 
 reckless : I may even break my neck.' . . . 
 
 " He stopped. We took a turn round the 
 garden. 
 
 " ' By the way, Gavarni, that is rather a bare 
 spot.' 
 
 " ' Ah, well ! what would you have me do ! It was 
 there my boy played at ball.' 
 
 "And then he said — 
 
 " ' Of course the school (he had let his house to 
 a schoolmaster in order to remain near his child) —
 
 NAPOLEON THE THIRD'S WRITINGS 117 
 
 the school will have to move now. I told the master 
 that if he would only go away within a fortnight he 
 need not trouble to pay me anything.' ..." 
 
 During the summer of 1857 the de Goncourts lost 
 their father's only brother, the worthy Representant 
 described in an earlier chapter ; and after a brief 
 sojourn at Neufchateau, where this de Goncourt of 
 another generation had spent his old age, they 
 wandered about Switzerland in search of fresh air, 
 September finding them once more at Croissy. 
 
 ''August 23. — Miirger tells us of the post-mortem 
 eulogy pronounced on Planche by Buloz, ' I would 
 sooner have lost 20,000 francs.' 
 
 " The truth is that old Buloz really shed tears over 
 his friend, who, though he may have had a horror 
 of cold water, had nevertheless a noble and dis- 
 interested character. . . . 
 
 "When Louis Napoleon was at Ham, writing pot- 
 boiling books, he used to send his ' copy ' for re- 
 vision to Madame Cornu. This lady, who was 
 connected with the Revue des Deux Mondes, always 
 confided the manuscripts to Planche, who gave both 
 time and hard work to correcting and preparing 
 them for the press. Louis Napoleon heard of this, 
 and when he became President, he offered Planche 
 the post of Director of Fine Arts ; the latter refused 
 the offer. . . . 
 
 " Just re-read Balzac's Paysans. Nobody has ever 
 called Balzac a statesman, and yet he was perhaps
 
 iiS EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 the greatest statesman of our time, the only one 
 who sounded the depths of our discomfort, the only- 
 one who, as from a liigher piano, realised the loss 
 of social balance, the state of morals versus laws, 
 which had supervened in France since 1789; and it 
 is a novelist who saw and understood truly all that 
 had occurred. . . ." 
 
 After their return to Paris — 
 
 " October. — The Cafe Riche seems to have become, 
 for the time being, the camp of literary dandyism. 
 It is strange to see how entirely the public frequent- 
 ing a given place arc influenced by their surround- 
 ings ; bohemians are afraid of the white and gold, 
 and red velvet ; besides, their great man, Miirger, is 
 renouncing his old gods, and passing over bag and 
 baggage to the bourgeoisie and the world on the 
 other side ; his friends are crying out against the 
 apostasy and treason of this new Mirabeau. 
 
 "Baudelaire supped beside us this evening. He 
 hiid no cravat, he was barenecked, his head was 
 shaven, and he seemed equipped for the guillotine. 
 And yet he was full of the latest dandyism ; his 
 little hands were well washed, his nails pared, and 
 as well cared for as those of a woman ; withal, 
 the head of a maniac, a voice as piercing as steel, 
 and an elocution suggesting a happy imitation 
 of St. Just. He denied obstinately, and with a 
 certain bitter auger, that he ever outraged public 
 morals. . . ."
 
 A "FIN DE SIECLE" SON 119 
 
 The year 1858 commenced anythiDg but auspi- 
 ciously for the de Goncourts. At a New Year's 
 supper party a friend warned them that they were 
 not looked on with favour by the Government ; and 
 onc6 again they felt tempted to throw themself into 
 voluntary exile. But Brussels had lost much of its 
 charm ; Jules and Edmond had become thoroughly 
 Parisian, both in associations and tastes, and, as was 
 well known, the Imperial bark was worse than the 
 Imperial bite. 
 
 ''^February 13. — I called on a young man of my 
 acquaintance — ^he was sitting by the fireside with a 
 bad cold, and spending his evening in the following 
 fashion : — ^Before him lay spread out a leaflet, in other 
 words, the prospectus of M. Wafflard, the great 
 undertaker. This paper contained a price list of 
 every style of funeral : nothing was left out — death's 
 visiting card, the number of priests, candles, and 
 pall fringes, all were mentioned, and there was an 
 engraving at the top of each page, in order that you 
 might know exactly what you were going to get 
 for your money. 
 
 " I looked through the leaflet, and found on the 
 margin a pencilled calculation, amounting to four 
 thousand and some hundred francs, a calculation 
 which his father, who came in to wish him good- 
 night, looked at and then burst out laughing — the 
 paternal sceptic had understood. 
 
 " When his father had gone, as I did not gather 
 the meaning of the situation, I asked him, ' For
 
 I20 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 whose funeral, tlie devil take me, are you making 
 out that calculation?' 'For that of my father,' 
 replied my young friend coolly. 
 
 " The greatest comedian could scarcely have 
 imagined a thing more grotesquely horrible ; to 
 sit down by one's fireside, and, by way of for- 
 getting one's cold, make out calmly, and in cold 
 blood, the invoice of one's father's funeral — he 
 being in perfect health ! And note further, that 
 my young friend had thought over everything when 
 drawing up his estimate ; propriety and economy 
 were both considered, also his father's social posi- 
 tion, the uselessness of unnecessary expense — 
 a second-class funeral, but a first-class burial 
 service. ..." 
 
 ''March 5. — Spendthrifts, fools and madmen, are 
 strange beings. If an inheritance falls to them 
 they suddenly become sober, wise, and economical, 
 
 calculating everything to the last farthing. X , 
 
 an absolute type of the prodigal son, is now rejoic- 
 ing in the possession of a fortune. Yesterday he 
 opened a drawer of his writing-table in presence 
 of his friends, showed them fifteen hundred franc 
 notes, fingered them several times, sighed, and put 
 them all back in the drawer, saying, 'I know I 
 owe you all money, but strange as it may seem, it 
 annoys me to pay it you back ! Will you take 
 it out in a supper?' 
 
 '^ March 12. — This evening the conversation 
 turned on 1830; and the Marquis de Belloy, in order 
 to give us an idea of the comradeship existing in
 
 FRIENDSHIP AS UNDERSTOOD IN 1830 121 
 
 those davs between friends, and of the eccentric, 
 though often noble and generous state of things 
 which then obtained, told us this story : Some time 
 previous to the production of Marion Delorme, he 
 wrote a letter to a friend, then a medical student 
 in the provinces : the friend, judging from the tone 
 of the epistle that the Marquis was perhaps sad 
 and out of funds, scraped together what money he 
 could and came to Paris. De Belloy, having no 
 need of assistance, thanked him, asked him to stay 
 a few days, and took him to spend the evening 
 with his mistress. Then followed for a time a merry 
 vie a trois. One fine day de Belloy missed his 
 friend, and somewhat anxious went off to see him. 
 He found a monster ! The medical student had 
 shaved off hair, eyebrows, beard and moustache, 
 and confessed to Belloy that having fallen in love 
 with the latter's inamorata, he wished to place 
 himself under the impossibility of seeing her. 
 During the evening of the same day de Belloy 
 persuaded this model friend to accompany him 
 to the first performance of Marioyi Delorme, with 
 consequences which threatened to be fatal to that 
 drama, for each time the poor fellow turned round 
 to applaud, his enthusiastic but ghastly counte- 
 nance made the whole audience burst into roars of 
 laughter. . . ." 
 
 Rachel had died on the 3rd of January. Three 
 months later, Jules de Goncourt went over the 
 great actress's house in the Place Royale.
 
 122 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 ''April II. — I followed the crowd upstairs; first 
 came a large room, dimly lighted from a courtyard : 
 all round this apartment were placed, in various 
 crushed and wretched attitudes, clothes which had 
 belonged to the dead — a woman's wardrobe, a 
 queen's trousseau — evening wraps of white satin, 
 the robes of Athalie, and all the poor little odds 
 and ends of finery which had once covered that 
 slender figure ; here were all the costumes of 
 her departed glory hung as on the walls of a 
 Morgue. . . . 
 
 " The clothes-dealers walked round, examining 
 the once proud but now shabby apparel, as if they 
 thought to find the spot through which the brother's 
 sword had pierced Camilles tunic. ' Pass on, 
 gentlemen and ladies ! ' cried the shrill voice of 
 an usher, who emphasised his words by pushing the 
 bewildered crowd along by their shoulders. 
 
 " Close by was the silver, and the champagne ice 
 pails, certainly not designed by Meissonier or Ger- 
 main ; three travelling bags, some wretchedly bound 
 books, diamonds, a jewel casket designed after the 
 Etruscan models in the Vatican and the Barbarini 
 Museum ; a gipsy set of ornaments composed of 
 common stones ; a hideous china dessert service, 
 and a coffee set of modern Sevres. . . . 
 
 " ' Pass on, ladies and gentlemen,' shrieked the 
 same voice once more. And then came the draw- 
 ing-room, an apartment worthy of an upholsterer 
 of the Marais. Then to the bedroom, with its little 
 black wooden bed, and blue silk curtains ; and all
 
 GUYS, OF THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS 123 
 
 about the apartment, on the bed, the sofa, chairs, 
 were scattered fine pieces of lace, English point- 
 lace flounces, Mechlin frilling, and handkerchiefs 
 from Valenciennes, which an old hag at the head 
 of the bed was busy examining. 
 
 " ' Pass on,' said the same voice once more. . . . 
 
 '' E tutto. And this is what Rachel left behind 
 her — diamonds, jewels, silver, laces, ill-bound books, 
 and modern Sevres. . . ." 
 
 ^' April 23. — We came back from Gavarni with 
 Guys, the draughtsman of the Illustrated London 
 Neivs, a little man with an energetic face and grey 
 moustache, who walks with a limp, and cease- 
 lessly pulls up his sleeves with the flat of his 
 hands over his bony arms ; diffusive, full of paren- 
 thesis, zigzagging from one idea to another, going 
 off the rails, losing, then finding himself again, 
 arresting your attention with a slang metaphor, a 
 word borrowed from the language of the German 
 philosophers or a learned technical term of art or 
 industry, and always holding you under the spell 
 of such a pictorial form of speech that it makes 
 things described seem concrete, visible. While 
 walking he evoked a thousand memories, throwing 
 in from time to time snatches of irony, sketches, 
 landscapes, descriptions of towns riddled by bullets, 
 men bleeding, disembowelled, and ambulances where 
 the rats crawled about the wounded. 
 
 "Then on the reverse side, as if in an album, or 
 at the back of a drawing, one discovers a thought 
 worthy of Balzac. This devil of a man gave
 
 124 EDMONI) AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 us social silhouettes, glimpses of the French, and 
 the English type, which were quite new and fresh, 
 not having got mouldy in books ; satires lasting 
 two minutes, pamphlets compressed into a word, 
 a treatise on the comparative philosophy of the 
 national genius of races. . . ." 
 
 About this time the brothers made the close 
 acquaintance of Charles Edmond the critic, and 
 his wife. 
 
 ''Sunday, May g. — We dined at Bellevue with 
 the Charles Edmonds in a tiny cottage full of light 
 and gaiety, a real little nest with a garden the size 
 of a basket, and where there is only room for 
 flowers. . . . 
 
 " Apropos of and his book, some one happens 
 
 to quote the words of INIontrond, Talleyrand's wild 
 friend, whom a priest asked on his deathbed whether 
 he had ever blasphemed the Church. 'Monsieur 
 le Curd, I have always lived in good society ! ' . . ." 
 
 " June 6. — A dinner at the keeper's house in the 
 forest of Saint Germain — Saint- Victor, Mario Uchard, 
 Aurdlien Scholl, and Jules Lecomte. 
 
 "Jules Lecomte, the man we caught sight of in 
 the shadowy light of his study, and whose appear- 
 ance struck us then as cold, sharp, and mysteriously 
 intimidating, gave us the impression, when we saw 
 him in the daylight, of some bourgeois suffering 
 from a fit of remorse, or from a deep-seated disease. 
 
 "He looked as if he carried his past on his
 
 JULES LECOMTE, A PARIS JOURNALIST 125 
 
 shoulders, and seemed possessed with the discomfort 
 and reserve felt by a man who does not wish to 
 stretch out his hand without feeling quite sure that 
 there is some one to grasp it ; yet he inspired one 
 with sympathy and a kind of pity. 
 
 '* The man is full of anecdotes, which he pulls out 
 as if they were slides, and which he relates without 
 any sort of excitement, and much in the same tone 
 as if he were reading an official report. Though 
 devoid of all literary taste, he is the only writer 
 who can to-day be said to be a general press para- 
 graphist ; he is the only man who has the slightest 
 knowledge of what is going on everywhere, or of 
 what is being said and done, the only individual 
 who keeps his ears open elsewhere than in the Cafe 
 du Helder, or in the narrow literary coteries. He 
 stands on tiptoe at the half-opened door of society — 
 indeed of all societies, from that of the courtesan 
 to that of the diplomat; listening, cross-questioning, 
 and reading that daily diary of contemporary life 
 which never gets printed. 
 
 " He has often tried, so he told us, to collect 
 members of every profession round his table, hoping 
 that each specialist would divulge his secrets to the 
 other, and that all the intimate and hidden history 
 of Paris would come out during dessert from the 
 lips of a banker, a doctor, and a man of law. ' Do 
 you know,' said Lecomte, ' why Vernon sold his 
 collection ? He believes that things will come to 
 an end to-morrow, or the day after, and as he con- 
 siders himself one of those who helped to bring
 
 T26 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 about the events of the 2nd of December, and that, 
 in fact, there is a price put upon his head — he 
 imagines that everything he possesses will be ground 
 to dust, and so he has sold everything. Nothing is 
 left in his house except his bed, an arm-chair, and 
 a trunk.' . . ."
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Publication of L'Histoire de Marie Antoinette — Miclielet's opinion of 
 the book — Gavarniana — Flaubert — Orsini's love of Italy — Descrip- 
 tion of About — The room in which Napoleon the First planned 
 1 8 Brumaire — The de Goncourts' groom. 
 
 On the 19th of June L'Histoire de Marie Antoinette 
 was published by Firmin Didot, and four days 
 later Jules noted with delight that the book must 
 already be attracting attention, as the Dutch Em- 
 bassy had sent for three copies. 
 
 The excellent work of the two brothers upon the 
 periods of the Revolution and the Directoire had 
 nevertheless not prepared the public for the histori- 
 cal genius shown in their life of Marie Antoinette. 
 Always curious and accurate in their researches, 
 they had not hitherto struck the note of human 
 feeling, and needed the inspiration of such a subject 
 to help them clothe dry bones with life. 
 
 In estimating this chef-cV OBUvre, it must be re- 
 membered that the life of the unfortunate queen 
 had not yet been written as a whole. The tragedy 
 was well within the memory of men and women of 
 eighty, when the de Goncourts put pen to paper. 
 Madame d'Angouleme died as late as 1851, and her 
 piteous references to " my mother," the anniversary 
 
 of whose death, i6th of October, she kept for sixty 
 
 127
 
 128 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 years in seclusion, fasting, and weeping, were suffi- 
 cient to remove the subject from the domain of 
 mere literature or history. It was the brothers de 
 Goncourt who first in France threw upon a literary 
 canvas the portrait of Marie Antoinette as a whole 
 figure, nor have any documents which have since 
 seen the light discredited their conception of Louis 
 XVI. 's queen. There are points in her history 
 which cannot be elucidated, and mysteries which 
 are of slight consequence. Historians of every 
 shade of opinion admit that when the day of 
 trouble came she rose to meet it with extraordinary 
 courage ; and that her last will, addressed to her 
 sister-in-law the Princess Elizabeth, was a model of 
 clearness and resignation. 
 
 Michelet, when he had brought down his history 
 of France to the reign of Louis XV., referred 
 to the careful use of documents made by the de 
 Goncourts, and to their feeling for the spirit and 
 local colour of the year when the Dauphine came 
 as a young girl to the court of her husband's 
 grandfather; and Sainte-Beuve, when treating of 
 the negotiations of Marshal Saxe, says, that of 
 the Dauphine he will trace no portrait after the 
 " masterly work " of the Messrs. de Goncourt. " She 
 roused them to a rare enthusiasm, and they have 
 devoted their best powers to give her a place in 
 history as woman, queen, and martyr." 
 
 From Croissy, where they were spending a 
 month, they watched the progress made by their 
 book, and occasionally paid a flying visit to town.
 
 PAUL DE SAINT-VICTOR 129 
 
 " July 6. — At Saint- Victor's, 49 Rue de Grenelle 
 Saint Germain, at the back of a large court, there 
 is a little room of which the walls are covered 
 with facsimile drawings by Raphael and the great 
 Italian masters. Our host suddenly appeared, his 
 hair wild and uncombed, actually and metaphori- 
 cally en cUshahille, yet withal a charming fellow, as 
 handsome in his graceful untidiness as a youth of 
 the Renaissance. . . ." 
 
 And somewhat later, speaking of the same 
 friend — 
 
 " Considering the state of current literature, Saint- 
 Victor presents a very fine literary type ; he dwells 
 in the atmosphere of rarified art ; he soars in the 
 region of high ideas and great problems ; he broods 
 lovingly on Greece, with a longing to explore her 
 wonders ; he bursts into a description of India, 
 which he has never seen with his own eyes except 
 under the influence of opium ; he is carried away 
 by the fire of his own words, and he describes, 
 in profound and impressive language, the origin of 
 all religions springing from the grandest and most 
 primitive questionings of humanity ; he shows an 
 eager curiosity in exploring the cradles of the 
 world, the constitution of societies." 
 
 " Octoher 28. — M. de Vailly, who knows no 
 more of us than we do of him, made, in an article 
 published lately by L Illustration, a prediction re- 
 specting us, which may perhaps be realised. He 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 130 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 maintains that if we fiiU in love we shall feel 
 affection for the same person, and that both the 
 laws and customs should make an exception in 
 favour of our phenomenal duality ! " 
 
 The Messieurs de Goncourt were already hard 
 at work on a new series of historical studies. 
 
 The beginning of the year 1859 saw a second 
 edition of Lllistoire de Marie Antoinette. 
 
 " January 7. — After an absence of seven or eight 
 months Pouthier has made up his mind to come 
 back and dine with us. He leads every day a 
 more and more fantastic existence. He lives in 
 the Rue de rH6tel-de-Yille, in a masons' lodging- 
 house, and at five o'clock every morning he is 
 awakened by the sawing of the wood which is to 
 light the fire, the falling of the logs, the blowing 
 up of the fire, the workmen's departure for their 
 work : a few hours later he hears the lodgers' little 
 brats tumbling downstairs in the huge cast-ofi" shoes 
 of their fathers and mothers. 
 
 " There were davs in his life when he remained 
 in bed, striving to cheat hunger with a cigarette ; 
 and as a sort of consolation, he relates that a man 
 sleeping in the same room, and even more destitute 
 than himself, remained in bed two days without 
 eating anything, . . . and the horrible part of it was 
 that he, Pouthier, heard the other dreaming that he 
 was revelling in meals of three courses. . . . 
 
 " And yet the more I look about me, the more I
 
 CONCLUSION OF "LES HOMMES DE LETTRES" 131 
 
 respect this fellow. It is true he likes to wallow 
 in the mire, but at least he is loyal to his aversions, 
 and will not fawn to any one to secure an order. 
 He is apt to be trite and somewhat low, but he 
 has delicacy of feeling, he revolts against borrowing, 
 and in spite of his misery is incapable of harbouring 
 any feeling of hatred or envy against those whom 
 the world treats well. He does not, as some do, rant 
 of ' My mother, my mother ; ' he even declares filial 
 sentiment to be humbug ; nevertheless, he sent his 
 mother half of the small amount he earned this 
 year, and when she wrote, cursing him for not 
 going to see her at Saint Germain on New Year's 
 day, he answered, ' I could not come, because . . . 
 well, perhaps I can explain it best by saying, as 
 I am paying for the postage of this letter, I shall 
 have to give up my pipe for the day.' . . . 
 
 " January 27. — Our novel, Les Hommes de Lettres, 
 is finished ; we have now only to copy it out. It 
 is curious to note that in literature, when you have 
 once given birth to a thing, it no longer seems a 
 part of yourself; you no longer bear it in your 
 heart, nor do you feel the necessity of keeping it 
 as it were in life ; it therefore becomes almost a 
 stranger to you. You feel indifferent, bored, and 
 sometimes even disgusted by your book. That 
 is what we have been feeling during the last few 
 days." 
 
 This study of the literary Paris of 1 850-1 860 was 
 based on the play which the brothers had not sue-
 
 132 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 ceecled in placing in any theatre, but though 
 finished during the winter of 1859, the novel was 
 not published till the following year, 
 
 ''Friday^ Jan. 28. — Gavarni came in towards 
 the end of dinner : he was not hungry, and had 
 just lunched, though it was seven o'clock ! This 
 was very characteristic ; he has a mind quite above 
 all material delights, and the only pleasure he 
 enjoys, the sole recreation he allows himself from 
 his terrible work, is the conversation of those he 
 styles the wealthy, namely, the beings who have 
 drunk deep at the well of knowledge, as, for 
 instance, Guys, Aussandon, &c. &c., those complex 
 and original spirits who are in themselves a perfect 
 fund of information, and whose life, according to 
 Gavarni, * is spent in being a source of study and 
 delight to the intellects of those who sit with them 
 over their wine, and this although they leave no 
 record either in literature or painting." Just now 
 Gavarni makes a point of dining at the Taverne 
 Anglaise, because the proprietor of that restaurant 
 exposes for his benefit the various sleights-of-hand 
 by which pickpockets commit thefts in cafes. 
 
 " He is tired, for he has been going round lately 
 to all the bankers, Rothschild, &c., to effect a loan 
 of 50,000 francs (^2000), on his house at Point du 
 Jour. He found bankers as hard as they are pro- 
 verbially said to be. Most trying to him was the 
 fact that the Credit Foncier, to whom he appealed 
 as a last resource, put him oflf for a month ; yet he
 
 GAVARNIANA 133 
 
 feels no bitterness, only annoyance, at being obliged 
 to lay his ordinary work aside. 
 
 " Passing through the Rue Montesquieu before a 
 tailor's shop — 
 
 " ' By the way, I must buy a pair of trousers.' 
 
 " We go in and are shown upstairs. 
 
 " ' I want a dark, warm pair of trousers.' 
 
 " They take his measurements. 
 
 "'I understand nothing at all about this sort of 
 thing. Do you think they will fit me ? How much 
 is it?' 
 
 " 'Twenty-six francs.' 
 
 " He pays down the money and carries off his 
 trousers under his arm. 
 
 "We go into a dark little cafd and fall into con- 
 versation about a project which has been already 
 discussed, namely, that of publishing a large illus- 
 trated work on the Imperial Court. 
 
 " ' I have often thought of it myself,' he exclaimed. 
 Then he told us there had been some talk recently 
 about re-designing the costume of the Imperial 
 ' Garde,' something after the style of the Horse 
 Guards. ' I was the only one who could have done 
 it, and I should not have given them a fancy 
 dress costume. But bodily idleness overcomes me 
 completely ... a physical idleness which increases 
 in direct proportion to the activity of the mind." 
 
 '"M. Guillaume!' 
 
 "At this call from the waiter, Gavarni gets up 
 and shakes our hand. ' M. Guillaume ' is the name 
 by which he is known here. ...
 
 134 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 " At the Cafe Riclie there was next to me an old 
 man. The waiter, after having enumerated the list 
 of dishes, asked him which he desired to have. 
 'Alas,' said the old man, 'I desire the power to 
 desire.' He was age in person . . . was this old 
 man. . . ." 
 
 '' AiJril 27. — We are plnnged in the blackest, 
 deepest, most intense dulness, . . . and yet from 
 it we extract a certain bitter wild enjoyment. In 
 our heart of hearts we are cherishing the idea of 
 giving up our nationality, and taking refuge abroad, 
 beginning life over again, as in the free-speaking 
 Holland of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
 turies. . . . We should start a paper protesting 
 against the actual state of things, we should speak 
 out and break the seal that is upon our lips, and at 
 last ease ourselves of our disgust by a cry of anger. 
 We have had a vein of bad luck of late. Every- 
 thing comes to an untimely end — all we undertake 
 is a dismal failure. Our play, which the papers 
 announced as being actually accepted, is now in the 
 waste-paper basket. Our novel, which was already 
 half written, has been returned to us. Added to 
 this, we have had worries over the renewal of our 
 farm leases, and have been physically very much 
 below par. 
 
 " May 1 1 . — There was a ring at the bell. Enter 
 Flaubert, who, hearing that we had come across a 
 huge mass of things supposed to be Carthaginian, 
 had come to ask for the address of the collection. 
 He then discoursed on his embarrassment about his
 
 A VISIT FROM FLAUBERT 135 
 
 Carthaginian novel, Salammho. He has absohitely 
 no material, and is obliged to invent probabilities. 
 And then, with the exuberant pleasure of a child 
 in a toy-shop, he spent a happy hour examining 
 our portfolios, our books, and our collections. 
 
 "Flaubert bears an astonishing resemblance to the 
 portraits of the young Frederic Lemaitre. He is 
 very tall and broad-shouldered, with large prominent 
 eyes, full cheeks, rough drooping moustaches, and 
 red weather-stained complexion. He spends four 
 or five months in Paris, going nowhere, and only re- 
 ceiving a few friends, leading the unsociable life we 
 all do — Saint- Victor following Flaubert's example, 
 and we following Saint- Victor's, 
 
 " This bearishness, characteristic of the nineteenth 
 century man of letters, is all the more curious when 
 we compare it with the sociable life led by the 
 writers of the eighteenth century, of which Diderot 
 and Marmontel furnish a good example. The 
 'Bourgeoisie' of to-day only seeks out the man of 
 letters when he is willing to play the ro/e of wild 
 beast, buffoon, or cicerone. 
 
 ''May 14. — Charles Edmond, who has lived every- 
 where and known everybody, has a habit when in 
 the midst of a chat, of suddenly opening a chapter 
 of his memoirs, and producing some strange figure 
 or characteristic anecdote. To-day he told us the 
 following apropos the national susceptibility of the 
 Italians. 
 
 *' ' Seven years ago he was at Nice, at the same 
 time as Orsini, with whom he was somewhat
 
 136 EDMOND AND JUT.ES DE GONCOURT 
 
 intimately acquainted. One morning Orsini invites 
 him to lunch ; he refuses the invitation, alleging, 
 half in joke, that he is a carnivorous animal, and 
 that Italians live on polenta and macaroni. There- 
 upon he goes off to call on a Russian Countess to 
 whom Orsini was paying attention. Whilst he is 
 there, a certain Count Pepoli, a common friend 
 of both Orsini and of Charles Edmond, asks to 
 have a few words with him in the ante-chamber. 
 He then tells Edmond that Orsini has consecrated 
 the whole of his life to Italy, that no more mortal 
 injury can be done him than to offer insult to the 
 Italian flag; and so he goes on, leading up to the 
 j)oint, which is that he is there in the capacity 
 of second in a duel which is to be fought, and all 
 on account of the polenta and macaroni ! There- 
 upon the Countess comes upon the scene, and 
 laughs so unmercifully at Orsini that he begins to 
 be ashamed of his foolish susceptibility, and makes 
 it up once more with Charles Edmond.' 
 
 ''May 2 2. — At Charles Edmond's we met About, 
 and whilst walking in the Bellevue woods, he con- 
 versed in the most open and expansive manner. 
 He has the intelligence of the man of the world, 
 with a touch of the usher. He talked of himself, 
 of his hair already turning grey ; of his mother, his 
 sister, his family, his castle in Savoy, his five 
 servants, of the eighteen people who always sit 
 down to his table, of his shooting, of his friend 
 Sarcey de Suttieres, whose book he describes as 
 being like Balzac, only well written ! He described
 
 A WALK WITH ABOUT 137 
 
 his disillusionment on re-reading Notre Dame de 
 Paris last week, alluded to the qualities of Ponson 
 du Terrail, whom with Merimee he placed very 
 high. He is a type of the successful egoist, not a 
 heavy insupportable egoist, for he is partly redeemed 
 by certain witty monkey tricks, and by the gentle 
 literary flatteries he addresses to the writers who 
 are present. He quotes to their faces passages out 
 of their books. But there is nothing in his con- 
 versations but what savours of the earth, of Paris, 
 and of futile journalism. 
 
 "He spoke of his book La Question Romaine, 
 which has just been seized. He told us, and we 
 believed him, that the Emperor corrected the proofs, 
 that Fould had a share in the work, and that Morny 
 provided the end. . . . About added how Fould had 
 confided to him that a suite of rooms was being 
 prepared at Fontainebleau for the Pope — at Fon- 
 tainebleau ! in case the Holy Father showed any 
 disposition to be spiteful, or if Antonelli played 
 some trick ! . . . 
 
 "We have engaged a fencing master, a real 
 fencing master, one, such as George Sand might 
 have brought into one of her novels. He is as 
 ardent a Republican, and as wordy a philanthropist, 
 as Sancho Panza, rustic in his tastes, loving the 
 country like a true Parisian, and as industrious as 
 a savage. Before he entered into possession of 
 his hundred square yards of land at Creteuil, he 
 used to live in a luggage compartment shunted 
 on to a piece of waste land. Fencing is the most
 
 138 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 problematical science in the world — after that of 
 politics. 
 
 ''June 22. — These are the materials with which 
 Napoleon boasted of founding a civilised society in 
 Egypt :— 
 
 1. A troupe of actors, 
 
 2. A troupe of ballet girls. 
 
 3. A show of marionettes. 
 
 4. A hundi-ed French women. 
 
 5. Doctors, surgeons, chemists. 
 
 6. Fifty gardeners. 
 
 7. Spirit dealers and distillers. 
 
 8. 200,000 pints of brandy. 
 
 9. 30,000 ells of blue and scarlet cloth. 
 
 " The popnlace takes its recreation in clmrchyards 
 and pays calls in hospitals." 
 
 ''October 15. — Madame de Sang, who is General 
 Lefebre-Desnonette's daughter, was kind enough to 
 propose a visit to her Napoleonic Museum, Napo- 
 leon's room in the house of the Rue de la Victoire, 
 which w^as bequeathed to her father. 
 
 "The place in question had a sloping roof, and 
 the door was not higher than a tall man. On a 
 background of dark violet were Pompeian designs 
 of a bluish white, and underneath a symbolical 
 figure of the Legion of Honour. 
 
 " Honneur et Patrie on one side, a classical male 
 head surmounted by an eagle ; on the other a 
 classical feminine head surmounted by a crocodile. 
 The bed is of wood, painted so as to look like green 
 bronze, the four posts are miniature cannons, and
 
 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE'S BEDROOM 139 
 
 from a spear hang curtains of the same colour as 
 those of the window, with bkie stripes, not unlike 
 tent curtains. Beside the bed is a little mahogany 
 chest of drawers, with bronze lions' heads, and rings 
 passed through their throat. The desk on which 
 the events of the iSth Brumaire were perhaps pre- 
 pared is inlaid with two swords, also painted in 
 green bronze. The chairs in the room are made in 
 the shape of drums. ... 
 
 " This room reveals the man as he was before 
 Brumaire — even at that time theatrical and affected. 
 The apartment looks like a scene in some wretched 
 little provincial theatre." 
 
 Returning once more to their beloved Eighteenth 
 Century, the de Goncourts found time to prepare for 
 publication '' Les Mattresses de Louis XF.," that is, 
 the lives of the five women — the three sisters de 
 Nesles, the Marquise de Pompadour, and Madame du 
 Barry, who exercised the most influence on Louis 
 le hien aime. In the November of the same year, 
 1859, the brothers sold out part of their capital 
 in order to pay for the printing of " Hommes de 
 Lettres," which had in vain sought either theatrical 
 manager or publisher. 
 
 ''Tuesday, November 13. — For the first time in 
 our lives, a woman has separated us for the space 
 of thirty hours. The woman in question is Madame 
 de Chateauroux, who obliges one of us to take a 
 journey to Rouen, in order to copy a packet of her
 
 I40 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 private letters addressed to Richelieu : they form 
 part of the Leber collection. 
 
 " Coming back I met Flaubert at the station, 
 escorting his mother and niece, who are going to 
 spend the winter in Paris, He is half way through 
 with his Carthaginian novel. He told me of all 
 he had to do in order to convince himself that he 
 was writing the truth ; he bemoaned the absence of a 
 dictionary, for this obliges him to use circumlocution 
 for nomenclature : he finds his difficulties increase 
 as he goes on, and he is obliged to use his local 
 colour sparingly to make it go far enough. ..." 
 
 " Toivards the end of November. — We have set up 
 a groom. He wears a real livery, a green Russian 
 greatcoat, coloured trousers, a white cravat, and a 
 cockade. Rose says I am doing a true charity. 
 His face suggests partly a monkey, partly a London 
 gutter sparrow. He has a small head, and a small 
 body. He seems to have all the low instincts of a hired 
 coachman, a nurse, and of a beggar's child, in fact, 
 he is the absolute type of his trade. Added to this 
 he is a socialist, and full of anger against those who 
 live on their income, or who are landed proprietors. 
 
 "Rose, under our influence, delivers grand speeches 
 worthy of a Boulevard drama, and preaches to him 
 the religion of honour in a corner of the kitchen." 
 
 ^'December 15. — We have come upon some ora- 
 torical fragments of Marat of Lyons, and no one has 
 really given any true conception of the passion, the 
 excitement, the fury, the ' delirium tremens ' so to 
 speak, of that period. The historians of the Revolu-
 
 THE BROTHERS' MENTAL ORGANISATION 141 
 
 tion have hitherto been represented by cold journa- 
 lists like M. Thiers, or by lyric poets like Lamartine. 
 . . , And alas ! the lack of intelligence in the 
 painters. 
 
 "We have been absorbed for the last day or two 
 in the 'Memoirs of Madame de Larochejacquelin.' 
 What a book ! It is a combination of the * Iliad ' 
 and ' The Last of the Mohicans.' What graphic 
 pictures ! You can almost read the passage of the 
 Nile in her passage of the Loire. 
 
 " Here we find the individual man standino; out 
 in sharp relief ... as he did in olden times ; war, 
 as it is here described, becoming less the struggle 
 between masses, and more the single combat of man 
 and man. It is there you find the last of the heroes. 
 The comic element softens the grim tragedy, when 
 the remains of the army, reduced to rags, deck 
 themselves out in turbans, and drape themselves in 
 old skirts to be shot down. Yes, it is as it were 
 the cast-off clothes of the Romans had fallen 
 upon the shoulders of a Theban legion. And do 
 you know what this retreat of the Ten Thousand 
 suggested to our painters ? why ! priests mounting 
 guard ! . . . 
 
 " Are we well or ill organised ? In every case 
 we always see the ultimate result, the final outcome 
 of a matter. Others throw themselves, like fools, 
 without a moment's reflection, into an adventure. 
 When we have a duel on hand, for instance ... if 
 we do not foresee our own death, we dwell on that 
 of our adversary ; we look ahead to the prison which
 
 142 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 is before us, and wc think over the allowance which 
 we shall have to pay over to the family of the 
 deceased ! Our brains are always conjuring up the 
 infinite possibilities of the unforeseen, the which 
 possibilities scarcely ever occur to other minds. . . . 
 Even in a glass of wine there lurk forebodings of 
 to-morrow's headache. And yet all these consi- 
 derations do not deter us from a necessary duel, a 
 tempting siren, or a bottle of really good wine. 
 
 "Is this a misfortune after all? I think not. 
 Though it poisons for a moment the enjoyment of 
 the present, it prevents us from being disconcerted 
 by any unforeseen event. We are always ready to 
 go all lengths in w^hat we have undertaken, our 
 resolution is firm, our will is strong, and our patience 
 is inured to the blows of chance."
 
 CHAPTEE IX 
 
 Gavarniana — Tlie beginnings of Sceur Philomene — Flaubert's criticism 
 
 of Hugo — A letter from George Sand — Letters from Bar-sur- 
 
 Seine — A tour through Germany — The true story of the Fall 
 of Sebastopol. 
 
 After the death of liis son Jean, Gavarni became 
 more and more intimate with his " littrehoit'' and 
 both brothers considered it a pleasant duty to cheer 
 and amuse their old friend. 
 
 Gavarni, though not forgotten, has gone out of 
 date, and yet he is the creator of much that is strange 
 and fantastic in modern French art. Of him Paul 
 de Saint-Victor once wrote an eloquent description. 
 " The wit, the fashions, the vices, the absurdities, 
 the follies, the conventions of a whole epoch are 
 judged, described, and condensed, not only in his 
 drawing, but in his language, always full of racy 
 simplicity and idiomatic power." 
 
 He is constantly referred to in the de Goncourts' 
 diary, and perhaps the only faithful early portrait 
 of the brothers was due to his pencil. The draw- 
 ing shows us two young men sitting in profile side 
 by side (a then very favourite way of painting or 
 drawing two people) — Jules, looking worn and thin, 
 wears his hair a la Byron, and his coat is cut accord- 
 ing to the last mode of 1856. Both brothers have 
 
 143
 
 144 Er3M0ND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 the effiU refined look common to members of the 
 old French noblesse from which they sprang, and 
 they seem strangely out of place in this album, 
 heading the series of certain noted journalists of 
 the day ; and yet Gavarni had thought to do them 
 great honour in placing them there. The cari- 
 caturist himself was one of the quaintest types the 
 authors came across ; it was to his maternal uncle, 
 Guillaume Thiemet, that he owed both his Chris- 
 tian name and his extraordinary talent. Thiemet 
 was the Toole, the Corney Grain, and the Cruik- 
 shank of the latter end of the eighteenth century ; 
 inexhaustible as mimic, as caricaturist, and as comic 
 comedian. 
 
 Gavarni's father had been an old revolutionary 
 republican, somewhat disgusted with the men of 
 his time, but loyal to his old convictions. The 
 youthful Gavarni got his lessons at the house of 
 an architect whose wife spent her time reading the 
 romances of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe ; and the boy early 
 began to get his pocket money by selling little 
 sepia sketches to a Demoiselle Naudet, a poor 
 picture-dealer on wdiat was then the Place du 
 Carrousel. She introduced his work to Blaisot, an 
 art publisher who flourished during the first years 
 of the Restoration, and he ordered of the youthful 
 artist " sets of devils," meaning thereby grotesques 
 somewhat similar to the diabolic adornments of an 
 old cathedral ; and Gavarni produced them regu- 
 larly — insect devils, feathered devils, poor devils, 
 and devils in pig-tailed perukes ; these personages,
 
 GAVARNI'S VISIT TO ENGLAND 145 
 
 however, not sufficing to gain the required income, 
 he took to engraving for a living. 
 
 He is described by Gautier as having been in 
 1830 a charming young man with curly hair, and 
 " as particular as an Englishman " about his dress, 
 for he was beginning to earn enough to satisfy his 
 fantasies of costume ; and in 1832 he was in full 
 swing, publishing his Physionomie de la Popu- 
 lation de Paris, showing the soldiers, the children, 
 the citizens, the policemen, the Parisienne as grande 
 dame and hourgeoise, indoors and out, in curl papers 
 and in ball dresses, yawning, laughing, asleep, awake ; 
 the bourgeois gentilhomme, and the gentilJiomme 
 bourgeois, the vagabonds making oratorical poses in 
 the police courts, &c. Gavarni seized them all, threw 
 them on paper, and his fame spread far and wide. 
 
 In 1847 he came to London, where he seems to 
 have been quite anxiously expected, for at that time 
 our social links with Paris were very close. But in 
 England he did not get on very well ; though he 
 was most intelligently interested in all he saw. 
 He snubbed Thackeray, who came full of zeal to 
 invite him to dinner ; he actually missed, without 
 any excuse, an appointment to sketch the Queen, 
 who, in common with Prince Albert, had the highest 
 admiration for his genius ; he was further said to 
 have declared that an English lady in full dress 
 was like a Cathedral ! Finally he went off at a 
 tangent on scientific notions, and, although the most 
 sober of men, took what the de Goncourts whim- 
 sically style " le gin du pays,'' to stimulate his 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 146 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 researches into the higher mathematics ! It was high 
 time for him to get back to France, after an absence 
 of something like two years, during wliich the Orleans 
 monarchy had been replaced by the Repul)lic and 
 the Prince President. As has been recorded, it was 
 at the end of 1851 that the two young de Goncourts 
 first saw Gavarni, and found him deep in water-colour 
 painting and Cartesian Philosophy ; he took both 
 brothers into his heart, and treated them with great 
 kindness, telling them of all his adventures, and 
 initiating them into all his theories and ideals, appa- 
 rently believing in nothing but mathematics, essaying 
 in vain to wrino' out the answer of the universe from 
 what he called " the music of numbers." 
 
 After the death of his favourite son, his intellect 
 took an extraordinary turn ; he would discourse 
 on scholastic philosophy and Louis Veuillot — by 
 no means with disapproval. It seemed to be the 
 only train of thought on wdiich his mind could dwell 
 with interest, though of course without Ijelief; 
 and in i860 he was but the shadow of his former 
 self. With difficulty Jules persuaded him to go 
 once more to an Opera ball, but even during the 
 supper which preceded this j^:>a?*^ie fine, he spent his 
 time noting down on tiny scraps of paper the mathe- 
 matical problems he had thought out on his way 
 to the Rue Saint Georges. 
 
 " Behold him," wrote Jules de Goncourt on 
 February the 4th, describing the evening, " ascend- 
 ing the grand staircase of the Opera, and plunging 
 into the scene which he last witnessed fifteen years
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF " SCEUR PHILOMENE" 147 
 
 ago. He hangs on my arm, lost in the crowd, 
 as a king might lose himself in his own kingdom : 
 he, Gavarni, who might well say, ' Le Caimaval, 
 c'est moi.' 
 
 " He studies with a certain interest the newest 
 modes and fashions, and we spend an hour looking 
 on at the dancing, and the gay throng of dominos 
 and costumes . . . then, when he has seen every- 
 thing, we bring him back to sleep with us. . . . 
 He drags himself along, and walks up our stair- 
 case slowly, slowly ; and as we are finally sitting 
 settled in by the fire, he confides to us that when 
 we left the Opera he had hardly strength left to 
 put one foot before the other." 
 
 ''Sunday, February 5. — We lunched with Flaubert. 
 Bouillet told us the following pathetic story about 
 a nun belonging to the hospital at Eouen, where 
 he was a medical student. ' This sister cherished 
 an affection, which he believes to have been purely 
 platonic, for one of his fellow students. Well, 
 this young man committed suicide by hanging 
 himself. The Hospital Sisters were cloistered, and 
 only came down into the courtyard on the days 
 when they received Holy Communion. Bouillet 
 was watching beside his dead friend when he saw 
 the Sister come in, and kneel at the foot of the 
 bed : he then heard her murmur a long prayer 
 . . . she doing all this without taking the slightest 
 notice of him. When she rose from her knees, 
 Bouillet put into her hand a lock of the dead
 
 148 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 man's hair wliicli had been cut off for his mother ; 
 she took it without thanking him or uttering a 
 word of any kind, and during the years they 
 worked touether the nun never alluded to what 
 had occurred.' ..." 
 
 The above story made a deep impression on the 
 imaginations of both brothers, and suggested to 
 them their novel Sceur Philomene, one of the first 
 purely psychological realistic studies published in 
 France. 
 
 " March 4. — We w^ere discussing Hugo's 'Legendes 
 des Siecles' with Flaubert. What strikes him in 
 this author, who claims to be a deep thinker, is 
 the utter absence of any capacity for thought. 
 Hugo, he maintains, is a naturalist and a philo- 
 sopher ; the sap of the trees has crept into his 
 blood. . . . Flaubert speaks in scathing terms of 
 Feuillet, and of the way in which he truckles to 
 women in his w^orks. ' This proves,' said Flaubert, 
 'that he does not care for the sex. Those who 
 love woman write books in which they tell all 
 they have suffered through her, for love is bred 
 in suffering.' ' Perhaps,' we observed, ' this explains 
 maternity.' 
 
 "The art of pleasing consists in never speaking 
 of oneself and always talking to others of them- 
 selves. Every one is aware of this, yet how often is 
 it forgotten. 
 
 ''March 10. — I have just received from George 
 Sand a charming letter apropos of our Homines de
 
 A LETTER FROM GEORGE SAND 149 
 
 Lettres. To tell the truth, our book can only be said 
 to have had a succes cVestime ; it is not selling well. 
 During the first few days of its publication we 
 thought there 'would be a Q-reat demand for it. 
 During the last fortnight only five hundred have 
 sold, and I dou1)t if it will reach a second edition. 
 Yet after all we are proud of our book ; we feel sure 
 it will live in spite of all, and notwithstanding the 
 anger of the journalists ; and to those who would 
 like to ask us, ' Then you have a very good opinion 
 of yourselves ? ' we would answer, ' A poor opinion 
 when we consider ourselves, a very good opinion 
 when we compare ourselves to others ! ' " 
 
 The letter written to the brothers by George 
 Sand ran as follows : — 
 
 " Messieurs, — I have not the pleasure of your 
 acquaintance. I am a savage. I cannot make com- 
 pliments, and am not even polite ; therefore you 
 may believe in the truth of what I am going to 
 say. Your book is a very fine book, and you are 
 possessed of an immense talent. I do not know if 
 my saying this proves my utterance to Ije valid — 
 many people tell me I have no literary judgment. 
 I do not believe those people — one never does. 
 Still I do not pose as a judge. I impart to you my 
 impressions and my convictions, take them for what 
 they are worth. What a terrible world you have intro- 
 duced me to ; is it really as bad as that ? If so, I 
 have not come across it ; in my time things were not 
 thus. But the picture is so striking, so well painted,
 
 150 EUMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 that you must have worked from nature. . . . Ah ! 
 the cowards, the fools, the wretched creatures ! What 
 a powerful severe satire ! Your hand is strong to 
 strike, your indignation eloquent. Martha— I know 
 her, 1 have seen women like her ; she is terril;)ly, 
 awfully true to life. And your hero's end is a night- 
 mare. . . . 
 
 " Since your first writings you have made great 
 progress, but this does not surprise me, I foretold 
 what has occurred, and feel flattered at having been 
 right. But your future holds still better things in 
 store ; you will simplify your methods, and put some 
 order into your abundance of materials. I am aware 
 that this is the new school; they wish to show all, 
 tell all, and not leave a single blade of grass in 
 shadow. ... It is dazzling, sometimes too dazzling. 
 You will in time discover that, as when composing 
 a great picture, a certain amount must be thrown 
 aside. . . . But this is nothing. Youth is such an 
 excellent defect. ..." 
 
 But for one such letter there were many dis- 
 appointments ; and on the very evening of the day 
 that they received Madame Sand's warm-hearted 
 words of praise and encouragement, Jules wrote in 
 the diary : — 
 
 " Perhaps some day these lines, which we write 
 in cold l)lood and without despair, will teach en- 
 durance to workers of another age. We would have 
 them know that after ten years of work, the publica- 
 tion of fifteen volumes, after long vigils, persevering
 
 GERMAN COURT ETIQUETTE 151 
 
 conscientiousness, and even some success ; after oivino; 
 to the world an historical work which has already 
 a European reputation ; after this very novel, in 
 which even our enemies recognise ' a stupendous 
 strength,' neither the least im23ortant newspaper, 
 nor any small review, has come to ask us what is 
 going to happen to the MS. of our next novel ; this 
 at a time when the most insignificant literary penny- 
 a-liners, who pose as being learned, are edited, paid, 
 and have their works published." 
 
 " Saturday, March 17. — I heard a humorous thing 
 yesterday respecting the etiquette of German courts : 
 it is forbidden to blow one's nose, or even to sneeze, 
 in the presence of the Eoyalties of those parts of 
 the world. An ambassadress of my family was ac- 
 cordingly much discomfited whenever she took cold. 
 Fortunately she gained the affection of an antiquated 
 camerera viajor, the successive members of whose 
 family had for generations bequeathed to their de- 
 scendants the secret of never sneezing in presence 
 of their sovereisfn. And this secret she revealed 
 to my cousin ; it consisted in pinching in a peculiar 
 way the interior cartilage of the nose. 
 
 "Thursday, Ajjvil 12. — We spent the evening 
 at Brevannes with an old family friend, M. Colardez. 
 He sits there, always the same, buried in his books 
 — his memory, his intelligence, his powers of irony 
 always keen and alert. We philosophised for a 
 while with this great and charming mind, walking 
 up and down the little straight paths of his garden
 
 152 ED.MOND AND JULES 1)E GONCOURT 
 
 discussing the lethargy which has come over pro- 
 vincial life since the Revolution centralised all 
 energies in the capital. To-day everything goes 
 to Paris, the ])rain power as well as the fruit ; and 
 the town is fast becoming a colossal all-absorbing 
 world, a polypus city, like Rome in the days of 
 Aurclius. 
 
 "April 17. — If you go to the root of the farmers' 
 grievance, you find one undisputed fact : men are 
 becoming unfit for manual labour. Education is de- 
 stroying the race of labourers, and thereby bringing 
 about the ruin of agriculture. And whilst lament- 
 ing thus, our farmer Flammarion bids us observe 
 that we are walkins; on our own fields ! wdiat a strange 
 resemljlance they bear to those of other people. 
 
 "April 23. — Life is decidedly a dull affair. 
 Nothing unexpected ever happens. I spend my time 
 receiving sale catalogues and suffering various forms 
 of discomfort, including too familiar headaches. No 
 mysterious individual leaves me a fortune. No one 
 will think of offering me the freehold of the pretty 
 house in the Rue Larochefoucauld, which I saw sold 
 to-day ; and when I glance over my past life it has 
 always been the same kind of thing ; surely I have 
 the right to call Providence a cruel stepmotlier ! In 
 the course of my whole existence I have only had 
 one piece -of exceptional good luck. It was during 
 my infimcy. My nurse was holding me in her arms, 
 and we passed a shop where hung a most beautiful 
 expensive toy. A stranger who was passing at the 
 time bought it and presented me with it !
 
 EDMO'JL' cr Go^^'■.ODh: 
 
 

 
 SOME OPINIONS ON WOMEN 153 
 
 ''Thursday, May 10. — We asked Gavarni to-day 
 whether he had ever really understood a woman. 
 He answered, ' Woman is quite impenetrable, not 
 because she is deep, but because she is hollow ! ' 
 We asked him whether he had ever been in love. 
 ' No, the only people I have ever cared for are my 
 father, my mother, and my child ! ' . . . 
 
 ''May 25. — Some people are born with a domestic 
 temperament ; they are absolutely fitted to be under 
 the subjugation of the man who happens to be in 
 power — they at once adopt the ideas in vogue . . . 
 in short, they bow down to success. These form 
 the majority, and a hapjDy majority it is. But 
 others, like ourselves, come into the world with a 
 fierce spirit of rebellion against all that triumphs— 
 our hearts glow with pity and love for all that are 
 vanquished and crushed in the overwhelming victory 
 of the Commonplace, . . ." 
 
 Bar-sur-Seine, one of the de Goncourts' favourite 
 summer retreats, and where they spent the June 
 of i860, is an old world town some twenty -five 
 miles from Troyes, and situated on one of the most 
 picturesque stretches of the upper Seine. 
 
 To Paul de Saint-Victor. 
 
 " Bar-sur-Seine, June 12, i860. 
 
 " Your friends, my dear fellow, are staying in 
 
 a place where the rain comes as a diversion. What 
 
 more can I say ? They lead the life of peaceful 
 
 oysters, reading Les Liaisoyis Dangereuses in the
 
 154 EDMOND AND JULES 1)E GONCOURT 
 
 open fields, mucli astonishing the said fields ; digest- 
 ing good food ; smoking pipes, which they allow to 
 go out ; chasing after thoughts which they fail to 
 catch, thinking first of those who perchance re- 
 member them, then a little of Paris, and much of 
 you. . . . 
 
 " I fain would see you here, but jjerhaps we 
 should then less enjoy our resemblance to the animal 
 creation. AVe should have to talk ; you would, in 
 spite of yourself, give us ideas ; but still you would 
 rest, you would be out at grass, and you would not 
 be obliged each Sunday to roll your rock uphill. 
 Our Bellevue promenades would l)e renewed in the 
 woods, and under the shade of the willows by the 
 side of the river. Unfortunately there is this 
 great difference between God and the journalist — 
 the latter cannot rest on the seventh day. You 
 see I long for, and pity you. 
 
 " And your abominable whooping - cough ? I 
 hope it is well over, and that your throat is all 
 right. What has become of you, — what are you 
 doing? Are you sketching a great Bacchus for 
 us ; and have you dog-eared that fat volume of 
 Dionysus which frightened me so at your rooms the 
 other day ? 
 
 " What are you doing with your life ? — Do you 
 each evening trot out Claudin in the Bois de 
 Boulogne ? . . . The world of letters is really a 
 small provincial town ; has anything new occurred 
 therein ? Have you read any books which strengthen, 
 console, or delight ? Is Vanity as obvious as ever.
 
 A LETTER FROM BAR-SUR-SEINE 155 
 
 and Prose as flat ? And since we went away lias 
 any one picked up a new ejDitliet or discovered a great 
 man ? Is there no new and immortal pamphlet ? 
 We are exiled, shut up in prison. Send us a few 
 lines as an act of charity. 
 
 "And our journey: do you still think of it? 
 I need not tell you again all the pleasure which 
 we promise ourselves should it ever take place. 
 Really we ought to see Dresden with you. I 
 have reason to hope that you will have a red 
 ribbon in your button-hole by August, but when 
 we come back, a few weeks hence, I will tell you all 
 about it. 
 
 " In regard to local news . . . we have a tax- 
 collector who has a very pretty social talent, he 
 whistles an accompaniment to the piano : it is very 
 nice ! And in the way of respectability we have the 
 very type, a man who was born with gold spectacles. 
 An optician had looked at his mother ! His last 
 joke, fresh as hot cakes, concerned a burnt letter. 
 He said ' I offered it up to Vulcan ! ' 
 
 " Adieu. You see that we are living; in a strang;e 
 planet. Write to us, and ask what you will of your 
 friends. 
 
 "Jules de Goncourt." 
 
 This letter alludes to a long-planned journey, 
 finally made in September, when in the company of 
 Saint- Victor the de Goncourts visited Berlin, Dres- 
 den, Saxony, Switzerland, and Nuremburg.
 
 156 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 To Flaubert. 
 
 " Bar-sur-Seine, Jime 16, i860. 
 
 ". . . So here we are. Do you not think tliut 
 there comes a time of year when one woukl fain 
 be a vegetable, and plant oneself in the ground in 
 the hope of growing green once more ? We are 
 veoetatino- with much delioht. We eat, we fence 
 on the good earthen floor of a barn, and we almost 
 live in a l)oat. So much for the physical creatures. 
 As regards the moral being, do not think that for 
 fifteen days we have thought of anything like an 
 idea. It seems at times a heroic task to take up 
 a pen. A family game of cards in the evening, 
 and at intervals the reading of a page of Pascal, 
 or Laclos' Liaisons, completes the picture of our 
 life. 
 
 " And now for you. What are you about ? How 
 are you getting on with the reconstruction of your 
 imaginary and life-like Carthage, of which you are 
 bound to give us the people, the manners, the 
 passions, the religions, the women, the men, the 
 people in the streets, and their shadows on the 
 walls ? Are you still climbing that mountainous 
 middle chapter, or are you rather at that point of 
 your work when the conception can be lovingly 
 embraced, and the writer rolls down an easy slope ? 
 
 " Why do you talk in your letter of working 
 upon an empty abyss ? The true emptiness, my 
 dear friend, is perhaps history itself, because she 
 is incarnate death. After many days spent in dis-
 
 EDUCATION UNDER THE FIRST EMPIRE 157 
 
 secting the past, one's imagination becomes cliilled 
 as in the atmosphere of a ceUar. From the docu- 
 ments which one strips, rises an odour as of 
 mummies embalmed in pearl powder. And so we 
 hasten back to air, to daylight, to life, and to 
 fiction ; romance being, after all, the only true thing 
 in life. — AVith all my heart, 
 
 "J. DE GONCOURT." 
 
 " June. — The following is a curious instance of 
 
 the education given during the First Empire by 
 
 fathers of families to their children. The father of 
 
 a connection of mine addressed his son in these 
 
 terms : ' You must know Latin ; an acquaintance 
 
 with this tongue will give the power of making 
 
 yourself understood wherever you may happen to 
 
 be. You must learn to play the violin, because 
 
 if you are taken prisoner of war in some village, 
 
 you will be able to make the peasants dance to the 
 
 sound of your instrument, and this will bring you 
 
 in a few pence ; whereas, if you are in a town, you 
 
 will be looked upon as a distinguished young man of 
 
 good family, and this will procure you the entree 
 
 into good society, and will lead to your making 
 
 useful friends. Again, you must be able to sleep 
 
 as comfortably on a gun carriage] as in your bed, 
 
 and to accustom yourself to this, you are going to 
 
 sleep for a week on a counterpane nailed to the 
 
 floor ! ' 
 
 " A cousin of mine once observed to M. Colardez, 
 ' I have heard that you spoil your children terribly.'
 
 158 EDMOND AND JULES BE GONCOURT 
 
 " ' IMadame, I once lost a child.' 
 
 " Was not this a heartfelt answer ? 
 
 " ' Woe unto those productions of art, whose full 
 beauty is only visible to artists.' This sentence, 
 one of the most foolish ever said, was uttered by 
 d'Alem1)ert. . . . The lascination of a work of art 
 lies nearly always in ourselves, and depends upon 
 the feeling with which w^e view it at a given moment. 
 And who knows whether the impressions produced, 
 as we think, by outside things, do not really come 
 from ourselves and not from them ? There are days 
 when to our soul the sun seems grey, and some- 
 times grey skies call up to mind scenes full of 
 brightness. AVhat gives the full value to wine in 
 the glass ? — the moment, the place, and the table, 
 at which we drink. What constitutes the real 
 beauty of a woman is the love with which we 
 gaze at her." 
 
 On the 6th of September, the de Goncourts 
 started with Paul de Saint- Victor for their long- 
 planned tour in Germany. 
 
 " T have seen Heidelberg," wrote Jules in the 
 diary. " It seemed to me I was looking at Victor 
 Hugo's work, when posterity will have passed over 
 it . . . when the words will have become rusty, 
 when the magnificent walls of his literary edifice 
 will attain the solemnity of a ruin, when Time, like 
 a centenarian creeper, will climb over and mingle 
 with the beauty of his verse. Though they be 
 old and broken, the pillars will retain the majesty
 
 AN EVENING AT BERLIN 159 
 
 of those old Sarmatian kings struck down under 
 a shower of missiles. And the Master's vast palace 
 of poetry will remain great and lovely, as does this 
 giant of architectural grace, recalling Albert Dlirer 
 mingled with Michael Angelo, Raphael with Palladio, 
 Gargantua represented by the famous Tun, and find- 
 ing place for the Invicta Venus within its chapel. 
 
 " Berlin, Friday 7. — I found myself enveloped 
 by the red tobacco -laden atmosphere of a small 
 cafd. Towards my table advanced the trembling 
 figure of one forgotten by time, barely alive, 
 his forehead swept by long wisps of white hair. 
 The poor little old man, wrapt in a cloak not un- 
 like a winding sheet, wore an order in his button - 
 liole, and he bent his head forward, giving me a long 
 fixed stare with silent terrible eyes, which might 
 have been those of a soldier stricken to death. Big 
 white moustaches hid his mouth, and his chin 
 trembled below the toothless jaws. He had hardly 
 the strength to carry the small box of perfumery 
 containing the eau-de-Cologne and pomatum which 
 he hoped to sell me. He kept laying them before 
 me, and his eyes opened wider and wider ; Bluchers 
 old soldier, in a voice which seems to come from 
 some cavernous depth, muttered in French, ' Entre 
 a Paris ! ' 
 
 " At night this city seems full of Hoffmann." 
 
 " Dresden, Sej^temher 10. — The two Watteaus in 
 the Dresden Museum (661, 662) are very interest-
 
 i6o EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 ing ; tliey are mucli less Venetian in tone than the 
 other works of the Master, . . . and from these 
 Pate has borrowed all the clear warm colouring of 
 his palette, the white, yellow, and scarlet tones ; 
 I used to think his colouring original. ..." 
 
 Nureml)urg struck the travellers as a silent, peace- 
 ful town, whose citizens must lead antediluvian exist- 
 ences ; and all they have to say about Vienna is an 
 enthusiastic description of a number of Chardins 
 found by them in the Lichters Museum. 
 
 The end of September saw Edmond and Jules once 
 more installed in their Paris home, but the younger 
 brother notes, somewhat sadly, that after Vienna, 
 " that city of noise and motion," Paris struck him 
 as grey and dull. 
 
 "The vanity of the dramatic author reminds one 
 of that Corinthian madman, who was convinced that 
 the sun was made for the sole purpose of giving 
 him light." 
 
 '' Sejytemher 8. — 'Do you know why Sebastopol 
 fell 'i You think it was taken by Pelissier ? ' We 
 were asked this question by some one who seemed 
 fairly well informed. ' Well,' he continued, ' the 
 true history of things is never told. Pdlissier had 
 nothing to do with it ! Sebastopol was taken by 
 the Minister of Foreign Affairs ! ' 
 
 " It seems that there was at St. Petersburg during 
 the war, a German military attachd, M. de Munster, 
 much liked in Russia. He kept King William in- 
 formed of all the secret details of the campaign,
 
 THE FALL OF SEBASTOPOL i6r 
 
 including the official reports of all tlie councils of 
 war held by the Empress. The King of Prussia 
 never communicated the contents of M. de Munster's 
 despatches to any one, not even to the head of his 
 Cabinet, M. de Manteuffel, but he did confide them 
 to his intimate mentor, M. de Gerlach, a mystical 
 Teuton and feudal Tory a la de Maistre, who was 
 full of scorn for those who had enforced their claims 
 to natural rights, and who was quite shocked by 
 Queen Victoria's visit to Paris. 
 
 " M. de Manteuffel came to know of this secret 
 correspondence. He had the letters intercepted, 
 and copied, while they were being carried from 
 the palace to M. de Gerlach's house. The letters 
 contained all possible information respecting the 
 defences of Sebastopol ; for instance, on one occasion 
 the following passage occurred : — ' If Sebastopol had 
 been attacked on such and such a day, from such 
 and such a point, the fortress would have been taken.' 
 And again, ' There is only one point which can 
 be attacked (and the point was indicated) ; if this 
 should come to pass all is lost, but so long as the 
 French have not found it, there is nothing to 
 fear.' 
 
 " The French Government bribed the thief who 
 intercepted the correspondence for the Minister's 
 benefit, and Napoleon III. was given the passage in 
 the letters revealing the secret. He at once de- 
 spatched orders to Pelissier to attempt the storming 
 of the fortress from the point indicated, but with- 
 out informing him on what ground he based his 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 1 62 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 certainty of success. Pelissier, bearing in mind the 
 failure of tlie attempt to storm Sebastopol on the 
 1 8th of 'July, refused to comply with the Emperor's 
 orders. One tele2;ram followed another ; Pelissier 
 got impatient, and had the telegraph wire cut. 
 The Emperor was on the point of starting himself, 
 but finally sent General Vaillant, and thanks to the 
 indications furnished by M. de Munster, Malakoff 
 was attacked just in the weak place. . . . These 
 letters cost only 60,000 francs — a mere song. Now 
 go and see the panorama of the storming of the 
 Malakoff as descriljed by the newspapers. ..."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Jules compares the Paris of the Past with the Paris of the Present — 
 Studies at the Hospital of La Charite — Henri Miirger's death and 
 funeral — The publication of Soiur Philomene — Flaubert's reading 
 of Salammbo — Letters. 
 
 "November i8. — My Paris, the Paris in which I 
 was born, the Paris of 1830 to 1848, is fast dis- 
 appearing, not only from the material point of view, 
 but also from the moral. A great evolution in social 
 life is beginning to make itself felt. I see women, 
 children, families, and whole households frequent the 
 cafds : this will lead to the extinction of home life. 
 The club for the upper classes, the cafe for the lower ; 
 it is to this society is evidently tending. Hence the 
 impression of unrest which makes one feel as if one 
 were only a passer-by. I am apart from all that is 
 going on about me, nor do I feel at home in these 
 long new straight boulevards, which, turning neither 
 to the right nor to the left, offer no interesting per- 
 spective. They do not recall the world of Balzac, 
 but rather evoke some future American Babylon. 
 No one should come into the world at a moment of 
 transition ; the soul is as ill at ease as would be the 
 body lodged in a newly-built house. . . . Perhaps 
 there is no true liberty for the individual when once 
 
 he is member of a civilised society, in which he loses 
 
 163
 
 1 64 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 possession of himself, his family, and his property. 
 Since 1789 the State has indeed become an absorbing- 
 quantity. It has claimed most extensively the right 
 of each for the profit of all, . . . and I am wonder- 
 ing whether the future is holding in reserve, under 
 the disguise of an absolute state government, aided 
 by the despotism of French red-tapism, a tyranny 
 much stronger than that of a Louis XIV. 
 
 ''November 29. — Apropos of a sketch of Madame 
 Hercule, the model celebrated for her wild extrava- 
 gances, Gavarni returned to his youth and told us of 
 the nocturnal adventures he once loved, of the nights 
 spent in the company of Mdlle. Aimee and of a 
 whole band of young respectable married women in 
 the Bois de Boulogne, in the Faubourg de Eoule, and 
 in the country ; of the pleasure parties, of which the 
 chief attractions were Mdlle. Aimee's merry laughter 
 and Chandellier's practical jokes. It is astonishing 
 and strange to think how little it took to amuse 
 the generation of 1830, and Gavarni's set formed no 
 exception. There was almost a childish sense of 
 youthfulness about these young men, they required 
 very little of the fillip and stimulating charm of 
 modern life, and seem to have spent the greater part 
 of their life with hourgeoises who were no longer 
 young, or with married women for whom they 
 cherished a secret and platonic affection. " 
 
 He described a day spent with Madame AValdor, 
 who had invited Chandellier, Mdlle. Aimee, and him- 
 self to visit her in her country-house at Saint Ouen. 
 The country-house turned out to be two rooms
 
 A PRECURSOR OF THE REALISTIC NOVEL 165 
 
 hired in a washerwoman's cottage, which afforded no 
 more extensive view of green fields and pastures new 
 than the walls of the courtyard, and the linen laid 
 out to dry. They lunched, they dined, and so 
 thoroughly enjoyed this singular peep at country 
 life, that they sat up all night talking, the two men 
 seated on chairs, the two women lying on the bed. 
 Their sole refreshments consisted of a bowl of punch, 
 which was made to go further by the addition of 
 water — which Chandellier was obliged to fetch from 
 the Seine. . . . 
 
 " The greatest strength of the Christian religion 
 lies in the fact that it offers consolation for the sad- 
 ness of life, its misfortunes, its cares, its sickness : it 
 appeals to those who suffer. It promises comfort to 
 those who need it, and hope to those who despair. 
 The older religions dealt with the joys of man and 
 the festivities of life. Since then the world has 
 grown old and sad. ..." 
 
 Haunted with the desire of intense realism, they 
 had no sooner made up their minds to write Soeur 
 Philomene than they decided to make this novel 
 contain a true description of hospital life in all its 
 phases, taken, as they themselves expressed it, " sui" 
 le vrai, sur le vif, sur le saignantJ' With this 
 object in view they obtained an introduction to one 
 of the doctors at the Charite Hospital, and for days 
 and weeks they lived in an atmosphere of grief and 
 suffering strangely painful to men of their vivid 
 imag-inations.
 
 1 66 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 ''December 23, — We spent part of the night at 
 the hospital We approached the bedside of a con- 
 sumptive patient who had just passed away. I 
 looked down and saw the face of a man of forty ; the 
 upper part of the body was propped up by pillows, 
 a brown jersey ill-buttoned was fastened over the 
 chest, two arms stretched out of bed, and the head 
 was turned slightly on one side and thrown back. 
 You could distinguish the sinews below the neck ; he 
 had a full-grown l^lack beard, a pinched nose, and 
 hollow eyes ; his hair was all spread out on the 
 pillow round his face, just like a heap of damp flax ; 
 his mouth was wide open, like that of a man whose 
 life had passed away whilst he was trying to breathe 
 but could not find air. . . . The dead man called 
 up another image in my memory — Goya's garrotted 
 criminal. 
 
 " Then I saw in the dim shadow far away, behind 
 a glass panel, a tiny gleam which grew larger and 
 brighter until it became a light ; something white 
 walked with it, something upon which the light 
 shone. This mysterious something opened the glass 
 panel, and two women came into the ward, one 
 holdino; a candle in her hand. It was the Sister 
 going her rounds, accompanied by a servant of the 
 community ! The Sister, doubtless a novice, for 
 she wore no black veil, was dressed in some soft 
 white material with a band round her forehead ; 
 the servant wore a nightcap, a black neckerchief, 
 and short skirt. 
 
 " They went up to a bed, the Sister to the head.
 
 A NIGHT IN A PARIS HOSPITAL 167 
 
 the servant, holding high the candle, to the foot. 
 Then I heard a voice so gentle and soft that I 
 thought it was the invalid's : no, it was the Sister 
 who was speaking to an old woman in a caressing 
 but firm tone, in the way one speaks to children 
 who do not wish to take something one must give 
 them. . . . 
 
 " In truth, this inspires one with admiration ; 
 it shows simple grandeur which makes the noisy 
 demagoo-ue seem very small when he rants of 
 ]iis love for his fellow-men. . . . Alas, the reli- 
 gion of the future will not easily produce such 
 devotion, 
 
 "And whilst watching this young girl, bending 
 tenderly over the horrible dirty old shrew who 
 abused her, I remembered Beranger, who deemed 
 it witty to make a Sister of Charity and an opera- 
 dancer enter Paradise on ecpal terms ! . . . 
 
 " Decemher 26. — -We have been again to the 
 Charite. . . . 
 
 "We went down with one of the house-surgeons 
 to see the out-patients in the consulting room. 
 A little old man approached slowly, the collar of 
 his shabby coat turned up to his chin, and a 
 shapeless hat held in his shaking hands ; he had 
 long scanty white hair and hollow eyes, and he 
 trembled, poor old man, like a dead leaf blown 
 by the winter wind. He held out a knotty hand 
 on which was a large growth. 
 
 " ' Do you cough ? ' asked the house-surgeon. 
 
 "'Yes, Monsieur, a Q;reat deal,' he answered, in
 
 1 68 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 a faint, dolorous, and humble voice, ' but it is my 
 wrist that gives me such pain.' 
 
 " ' We cannot take you in, you must go to the 
 Parvis Notre-Dame.' 
 
 "The old man said nothing, l)ut looked vaguely 
 at the house-suro;eon. 
 
 " ' And you must ask for the doctor, not for 
 the surgeon,' he continued, seeing the old man re- 
 mained quite motionless. 
 
 " ' But the pain is here,' the old man insisted 
 gently, pointing to his wrist. 
 
 " 'They will cure that by curing your cough.' 
 
 " ' Come, you must go off to the Parvis Notre 
 Dame,' cried the porter in a rough voice, in which 
 nevertheless was a touch of pity. 
 
 " We could see the snow falling in heavy flakes. 
 The old man went away without a word, hat in 
 hand. ' Poor wretch,' murmured the porter, 
 * what weather ! and it's such a Avay ofl" ! He 
 won't last more than five days.' — 'Ah, but if I 
 had taken him in to-day, Velpeau would have 
 sent him away to-morrow,' observed the surgeon. 
 ' He's regularly run down, as we say here. Yes, 
 there are bad moments to 1)e faced, but if we 
 were to take in all the consumptive people who 
 come to our door . . . we should have no room 
 for the others . . . for Paris wears out her 
 children.' 
 
 " This scene moved us more than anything we 
 had yet observed in the hospital. . . . 
 
 ''December 27. — How horrible is this odour of
 
 THE LAST ILLNESS OF HENRI MURGER 169 
 
 the hospital which seems to haunt us. I do not 
 know whether it is real or simply an effect of the 
 imagination, but we feel as if we must always be 
 washing our hands, and the odour that arises from 
 the water seems to us like the stale nauseous 
 smell of cerate. We really must tear ourselves 
 away from the hospital, and try to efface by some 
 violent distraction the impression it has left. . . . 
 
 ^^ January 1861. — A book is nothing unless 
 WTitten either by an artist or by a thinker. 
 
 " Instruction is the great peril of modern society. 
 Every peasant mother wishes, even by straining 
 every nerve, to give her children the educa- 
 tion she never received herself, and to have them 
 taught reading and writing, sciences unknown to 
 her. This wild folly, this mania, which is spreading 
 in the lowest stratum of society, of wishing to raise 
 one's children above one's own level (just as you put 
 the little ones on your shoulders when you want 
 them to see fireworks), this craze, I maintain, is creat- 
 ing a France of ignoble clerks, secretaries, and men 
 of letters — a France, where the workmen no longer 
 produce workers, the labourer no longer produces 
 labourers ; soon there will be no arms left capable 
 of doing the manual work of the country. . . . 
 
 ^'■January 18. — Miirger is dying of an illness 
 in suffering from which one falls literally into pieces 
 whilst yet alive ; they were clipping his moustache 
 the other day and the lip came off with the hair. 
 The last time I saw him was at the Cafe Riche a 
 month ago ; he looked well and hearty and in capital
 
 lyo EDiMOND AND JULES 1)E GONCOURT 
 
 spirits, for lie had just had a successful one-act play 
 acted at the Palais-Royal. . . . 
 
 " Apropos of this comedy, the papers had talked 
 of him more than they had seen fit to do apropos 
 of all his novels, and he told us that it was too 
 silly to waste one's time writing books which 
 brought one neither fame nor money — and that in 
 future he was going to give himself up to dra- 
 matic work ! 
 
 " One cannot help considering this deathbed as an 
 awful judgment on Bohemia. ..." 
 
 On the 28th of January Henri Miirger, the joyous 
 historian of French literary Bohemia, died, after 
 having written within a few days of his death the 
 touchino; lines : — 
 
 BALLADE DU DfiSESPEEfi. 
 
 " Entre sous mon toit, Ijois, et mange, 
 Dors, et quand tu t'eveilleras. 
 Pour payer ton 6cot, cher ange 
 Dans tes bras tu m'emporteras." 
 
 He was given a public funeral, the State paying- 
 all expenses. 
 
 " . . . We were at least fifteen hundred in the 
 courtyard of the Dubois Hospital. . . . Looking at 
 the crowd I began to reflect what a curious thing is 
 the justice meted out by immediate posterity with 
 regard to a writer who has just died. Only six 
 or seven persons followed Heine to the grave :
 
 FLAUBERT ON NOVEL-WRITING 171 
 
 Musset's mourners did not number more than forty. 
 The coffin of a man of letters has the same kind of 
 ofood or evil fortune as that which befalls literary 
 work. 
 
 " There was no real grief in the heart of this crowd. 
 I never attended a funeral where there was so little 
 said about the dead man. Theophile Gautier com- 
 mented on the discovery he has made about the oily 
 taste in beefsteaks, which he declared to be due to 
 the fact that of late they have taken to fattening 
 cattle with rape-cakes. . . . 
 
 " February. — No one wTites the books they in- 
 tended to write ; for it is impossible to foresee what 
 may inspire one with a motive. There is some 
 unknown power . . . some superior will, in fact a 
 kind of necessity, which orders the w^ork and guides 
 your pen, so much so that that which comes from 
 one's hand often appears not to be your own. Your 
 book astonishes you as much as something that was 
 latent in you of which you were not conscious. 
 That is the impression which Sceur Philomene pro- 
 duces upon me. 
 
 " The horror that men feel for reality has made 
 them have recourse to the following three safety- 
 valves : drunkenness, love, work. 
 
 "■Sunday, March 17. — Flaubert was talking to us 
 to-day. ' The story or the plot of a novel is quite 
 indifferent to me. When writing a novel my aim 
 is to represent a colour or a shade. For instance, 
 the tone of my Carthaginian novel is purple. In 
 Madame Bovary I was anxious to produce a musty
 
 172 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 shade, suggestive of the life of vermin. The moral 
 of the whole thing affected me so little that a 
 few days before beginning to write the book I had 
 a conception of Madame Bovary which was quite 
 different from the one eventually given to the world. 
 Though the tone of the picture and the surroundings 
 would have been the same, I had thought of her as 
 a pious, chaste old maid. ... I realised, however, 
 that that would make an impossible heroine.' ..." 
 
 The manuscript of Sceur Philomene was sent by 
 the authors to M. Michel Levy, the founder of the 
 famous publishing house of that name ; he, however, 
 soon sent the MS. back with a letter of reo-ret, 
 giving among other reasons for his adverse decision, 
 the painful nature of the subject, and the poignancy 
 of treatment. " Decidedly," wrote Jules, " both pub- 
 lishers and public wish to render our path as thorny 
 and bitter as possible. After ten years of labour, of 
 struggle, of battle, of many attacks and of little praise, 
 we shall probably find ourselves obliged to pay for 
 the publication of this volume." 
 
 Finally, to their surprise and considerable grati- 
 fication, they sold the manuscript of their story to 
 the Librairie Nouvelle, making, they considered, the 
 excellent terms for themselves of twopence (twenty 
 centimes) on each copy sold. 
 
 " SimclaT/, March 31.— We lunched at Flaubert's 
 house, and met Sari and Lagier ; the conversation 
 turned on the theatre. It is only during this
 
 THE CHARM OF THEATRICAL LIFE 173 
 
 century that actors have striven to produce sil- 
 houette effects : thus Paul Menier, taking a hint 
 from Gavarni's drawings, shows the public his back 
 as often as his face, and Eouviere reproduces on 
 the stage the twisted poses, and epileptic move- 
 ments of the hands shown in Delacroix's lithographs 
 of Faust. 
 
 " Sari talked curiously of his ballet - dancers at 
 twenty sous (the evening), of his chorus-girls at 
 thirty sous, and of that incurable craze for the stage 
 which forces those who have once tasted of theatrical 
 life to return to the boards. . . . ' There are work- 
 people,' he added, ' many of them most intelligent in 
 their way, who exchange ten francs a day for a sum just 
 sufficient to keep body and soul together, . . . carried 
 off their feet, led away by the exciting conditions 
 of theatrical life, the comradeship between the sexes, 
 the gossip of the green room, the feverish interest 
 in the success or the failure of a piece, and by the 
 thrill caused by the applause of the public' . . . 
 
 "After a visit to the municipal archives, an in- 
 voluntary feeling of awe came upon us when we 
 entered these rooms filled with the registers bound 
 in white vellum. The words printed on the backs 
 of these volumes had something solemn about them : 
 Births, Deaths, Marriages, Abjurations. The eye 
 was caught in passing by the name of some old 
 parish, Saint-Severin, or Saint-Jean-en-Greve, which 
 suffo-ested a host of memories. Here lay cradled the 
 Past of Paris ; and on a sheet of paper, the sole 
 memorandum of many who have passed away, —
 
 174 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 ' Bom, Married, Dead.' — How many shadows there 
 be who can boast only of this short biography ! In 
 what clouds of oblivion would be shrouded the past 
 of these millions of men, but for the signing of their 
 name, and the record of their existence contained in 
 these registers. 
 
 " A broken-down old fellow, whose complexion 
 matched in hue the musty old volumes round him, 
 came and went among these catacombs like the 
 genius of the place, ferreting out the documents, 
 scenting out as by a divining rod long past births 
 and deaths : he looked like a figure of old Time in 
 some ancient picture ; a cat followed him, a cat as 
 white as are all animals who frequent the region 
 of Death, as are the white mice who haunt grave- 
 yards. . . . 
 
 " Sunday, April i8. — Flauljert was telling us 
 to-day, that before going to Levy he had oftered 
 Madame Bovary to Jacottet. ' Your book is very 
 good,' observed the publisher; 'you possess a chiselled 
 style, but you cannot aspire to Amedee Achard's 
 success, can you ? Well, I am publishing two 
 volumes of his this year, and so I could not pro- 
 mise to bring out your novel for some time.' 
 
 " Mo7iday, May 6. — We went at four o'clock to 
 see Flaubert, who had invited us, together with the 
 painter Gleyre, to assist at a great reading of 
 Salammho. From four to seven Flaubert read in 
 a loud and sonorous voice, which has about as 
 soothing an effect upon you as the clanging of 
 bronze. Dinner was at seven, after which an interval
 
 JULES' CRITICISM ON "SALAMMBO" 175 
 
 was allowed for one pipe, aud then the reading started 
 afresh. He analysed certain unfinished portions as 
 he went along ; w^e listened till the last chapter was 
 reached— that was, till two o'clock in the morning. 
 
 " I am going to write my sincere opinion about 
 the work of a man I love, and whose first book, 
 Madame Bovary, I admired without reserve. Sal- 
 ammho does not come up to what I expected of 
 Flaubert. The personality of the author, so well 
 concealed in Madame Bovary, is here only too 
 clearly marked, and asserts itself in bombastic 
 and melodramatic fashion : the colourins; is too 
 heavy, and the style too florid. The effort is stu- 
 pendous, the patience infinite ; and though I criticise 
 the work, I most fully appreciate the remark- 
 able talent displayed by the author ; but I fail to 
 find in the book any of those flashes which reveal, 
 as it were for a moment, the soul of a nation 
 which has passed away. As regards the historical 
 moral re-constitution of a past epoch, our good 
 Flaubert deceives himself; the words he puts in 
 the mouths of his characters merely express the 
 ordinary generous sentiments of humanity, and not 
 anything peculiar to the Carthaginian populace, and 
 his Mathor is only, when all is said and done, 
 the operatic tenor of a barbaric lil^retto. Neverthe- 
 less, one cannot deny that, so far as the workmanship 
 is concerned, — and thanks to the labour expended, 
 and the local colouring brought in, — the reader will be 
 transported for the nonce into a world of Flaubert's 
 creation; but the picture conjured up before you is
 
 176 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 blurred, because while the perspective is not suffi- 
 ciently graduated, the tints are too uniformly bright, 
 and the length of description weakens the effective- 
 ness of the impression. . . . 
 
 ''June 19. — In Grossetete's restaurant we caught 
 a glimpse of Ponson du Terrail, with his dogcart wait- 
 ing on the boulevard ; it is the only carriage owned 
 by a Parisian man of letters. Alas ! the poor fellow 
 pays somewhat dearly for the privilege, by the 
 sweat of his brow, and by the sacrifice of all his 
 literary pride. He is known to have said to the 
 editor of a paper in which he was publishing a long 
 serial novel, ' Give me notice a few days ahead 
 if your public is getting bored, and I will finish 
 up in one chapter ! ' Why, a fruit-seller disposes 
 of his wares in a more dignified fashion. . . . 
 
 '^ Bai^-sur-Seine, June 13. — I woke up this 
 morning in a room full of the portraits of my 
 ancestors and ancestresses, clothed in the dress of 
 their time and social position : here was the man of 
 medicine, with a Boerhaave in his hand, the priest 
 with a mass-book, the banker holding a note of ex- 
 change. There was also the faded pastel of a soldier, 
 of a little girl with a yellow canary perched on her 
 arm ; of an old woman of dark, austere countenance, 
 the inconsolable Jansenist mother of the young 
 soldier, who was killed in a duel at the age of 
 twenty. There is a flavour about these portraits 
 of a world long passed away, where each felt pride 
 in his special profession or place. Now-a-days a 
 lawyer has his portrait taken in hunting dress. . . .
 
 VICTOR HUGO ON EXILE 177 
 
 '"'' July II. — After having carried about parcejs 
 of Sceur PhiloTnene all day, I dined this evening 
 with Charles Edmond, who has just returned from 
 Brussels, where he has been spending a few days 
 with Victor Hugo. The poet, who on the day of 
 his arrival had just written the word 'finis' on Les 
 Miserahles, said to him, ' Dante tried to make a 
 hell with poetry, I have tried to make one with 
 reality ! ' Hugo bears exile with rare philosophy, 
 and denies that one's native land consists only of 
 a certain portion of the world's territory. ' One's 
 country,' he repeated, ' what is that ? An idea 
 — perhaps it means Paris ! I have never felt the 
 need of it. My native heath is the Rue de Rivoli, 
 and I detest the Rue de Rivoli.' " 
 
 The critics gave but a poor recej^tion to Soeur 
 Pliilomene, Paul de Saint- Victor being the only 
 writer of importance who reviewed the book at any 
 length. His notice, published in La Presse, delighted 
 the brothers, as did a kindly letter written to them 
 about this time by their friend :— 
 
 " My dear Friends, — I am writing in a pause 
 between two articles. ... I am glad that the review 
 pleased you, and I beg of you to believe that my 
 praise was sincere. Your book both charmed and 
 saddened me. For three days my imagination went 
 into mourning. Cecile is excjuisite. I can see her 
 before me with ' her long face.' AVhere the devil 
 did you find all those little details of youthful j^iety ? 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 178 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 I think your descriptions might truly be styled 
 psychological studies. I have been through it all 
 myself ; the Jesuit College at Fribourg, where I was 
 educated, was absolutely the male twin to your 
 convent. Eeading your book I felt my old fervour 
 revive, ' Veteris agnosco vestigia fiainmse' I was 
 truly moved, much as might be an old serpent to 
 whom was shown his young skin. 
 
 " I have good news to give you of your book. 
 I hear it praised on all sides, and Bourdillac tells 
 me that it is going well." 
 
 Jules de Goncourt sent Gustave Flaubert one of 
 the first copies of the volume, with the following 
 letter : — 
 
 " Bar-sur-Seine, July lo, 1861. 
 
 " My dear Fkiend, — You will have received at last 
 our novel in volume form. 
 
 '* When you have read it we shall be very glad to 
 be informed of your judgment and general feeling ; 
 we are the more anxious to learn this, because we 
 do not ourselves realise what we have produced. 
 This story is the most impersonal piece of work we 
 have yet done. ... I give you my word that we 
 do not know whether the book is good or bad. 
 There are times when we fancy the story ought to 
 have -been called A Human Angel, and instead of 
 a medical student we should have made our hero a 
 Zouave. A Sister of Charity and a Soldier ! that 
 would have made a popular, a national romance.
 
 "SCEUR PHILOM^NE" CRITICISED 179 
 
 "... Now we want to ask you something — most 
 competent of critics, — Is our hospital thrown in suffi- 
 cient or in too little relief? . . . We have sought 
 unity, the concentration of all the interest on the 
 couple, above all, on the nun. 
 
 "As regards the latter, the chief difficulty was not 
 to make her too saintly. We tried to make her 
 a living woman, and so created her in a poor humble 
 position. 
 
 "I do not tell you of all the sacrifices, the ampu- 
 tations, the softenings down, to which we resigned 
 ourselves, through cowardly respect for the laws of 
 our country. . . . 
 
 "I do not excuse myself to you, my dear Flaubert, 
 for daring; thus to talk of nothino; but ourselves. 
 But I shall feel hurt if you in your answer do not 
 tell us plenty about yourself. How about Carthage 
 and Salammho ? How many pages have you still 
 to write ? Ah ! my friend, what a pleasure it will 
 be to meet you once more ! " 
 
 To this letter Flaubert made answer : — " Your 
 volume, received this morning at eleven, was read 
 through by five. I began by feeling rather cross 
 with you both during the first few pages, on account 
 of constant tautology — for instance, that of the word 
 ' bed ; ' but later I caught fire, and read straight 
 on without stopping to take breath, whilst now 
 and again my eyes filled with tears, just as if I had 
 been a common philistine. 
 
 " I think that you have made a decided advance
 
 I So EDAIOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 on Les Gens de Lettres, both as regards narrative, 
 deductions drawn from facts, and the general 
 phm. . . . 
 
 " I have but one reproach to make ; your book 
 ends too soon ; on reaching the last page one cannot 
 but exclaim ' Already I ' " 
 
 A few days later Flaubert, writing again to Jules 
 de Goncourt on the same subject, declares — "No, the 
 book is not overburdened with horrors ; I myself 
 could bear a few more ; but that is a question of 
 temperament. You found the right limit. There 
 are some exquisite passages, those describing the 
 old man coughing, the surgeon in the midst of his 
 pupils, &c. The end, Barriere's death, is splendid." 
 
 Soeicr Philomene laid for the brothers de Gon- 
 court the foundation of their fame as realistic 
 novelists. It is the story of a young girl brought 
 up by charity in a Religious House, and led by one 
 of her school companions into a sphere of religious 
 fervour alien to her own nature. Celine's persuasions 
 and prayers so far work upon Philomene that, when 
 the former departs to enter as a novice into another 
 Order, the latter remains with a distracted ideal of 
 life. She goes to live with an aunt wdio is house- 
 keeper to a gentleman ; and there encounters various 
 experiences which w^ound her in the most sensitive 
 recesses of her soul ; finally she makes up her mind 
 to embrace the religious life, and becomes a nun 
 of the Order of St. Augustine, and nursing Sister
 
 A LETTER FROM FLAUBERT i8i 
 
 in a provincial hospital. She here meets with 
 a young house surgeon, named Barriere. Between 
 them springs up a profound friendship. He dies of 
 blood-poisoning, and the book ends with a famous 
 scene, in which Soeur Philom^ne kneels by his dead 
 body, and silently carries off a lock of hair which 
 a fellow student had cut off for Barriere's mother. 
 
 Unfortunately for Sceur Philomene and her 
 luckless authors, the Librairie Nouvelle fell into 
 bankruptcy within a few weeks of the publication 
 of the novel. The whole edition was sold at cost 
 price to various booksellers, and the book only 
 obtained due recognition wdien it was re-published 
 fifteen years later by Messrs. Charpentier. But in 
 the de Goncourts' own circle Soeur Philomene met 
 with the warmest welcome and appreciation. 
 
 "July 15, 1861. 
 
 " What a reader, what a friend you are, my dear 
 Flaubert. Thanks, thanks, and renewed thanks 
 for your compliments, and above all, for your 
 criticism. . . . 
 
 " I am longing, my dear Flaubert, to hear you talk 
 and to listen to your laugh. It is a pity that you 
 cannot send me by post the clear sound of your 
 voice and the childlike ring of your merriment." 
 
 To Paul de Saint-Victor, ivritten the same day: — 
 
 " Once more thank you, dear friend. The last few 
 days we longed for happiness, and you have given
 
 i82 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 US a portion of joy. We were anxious, discouraged 
 about our work, living through those evil grey hours 
 of doubt when one struggles with one's literary con- 
 science, and a sense of disillusionment makes one 
 almost regret having published a book at all. 
 
 "Edmond had felt sure that Celine would please 
 you ; and therefore he triumphed over me this morn- 
 ing, whilst we were reading your letter in the garden, 
 close to a kitten which employed its little mind in 
 trying to catch a butterfly."
 
 CHAPTEK XI 
 
 An autumn holiday — The de Goncourts' first impressions of Sainte- 
 Beuve — Year 1862 — An evening with Theophile Gautier and his 
 daughter — A visit to George Sand. 
 
 In September the brothers joined Saint -Victor in 
 a tour through Germany and HoUand. In each 
 town the travellers paid their first visit to the 
 museum ; and long critical notes on the methods 
 and works of Rembrandt, Van der Meer, and Peter 
 de Hooghe fill up pages of the diary. Paul de 
 Saint- Victor seems to have been a pleasant travel- 
 ling companion. " He is so charmingly simple, like 
 a schoolboy in holiday time. At times he enthrals 
 us by the loftiness of his thought, at others he carries 
 us away by the delightful grace of his sallies, and 
 our laughter is excited by his absurd imitations of 
 M. Prudhomme and of Grassot. All these qualities 
 constitute him an ideal travelling companion for 
 us, wdio have been somewhat spoilt by our dull 
 home life. He is the only fellow-traveller we could 
 have borne during; a month's travel : and this is no 
 small praise. . 
 
 '& 
 
 n 
 
 *^ Septeniber i8, — There is decidedly no worse 
 
 trade than this fine art of letters. The Librairie 
 
 183
 
 1 84 EDMOND AND JULES DE GOXCOURT 
 
 Nouvelle is in bankruptcy. Our Hommes de Lettres 
 cost us about five hundred pounds ; Sosur Philomene 
 will brins^ us in notliino; : still it is an advance. ..." 
 
 " Shall I tell you the secret of all societies and 
 of all associations ? " said Gavarni. " Individuals 
 are like units, of such slight value, that they are 
 always on the look-out for a naught, which, placed 
 on their right hand, will l)estow on them the relative 
 value of a ten ! . . ." 
 
 " It seems to me, and surely I am right, when 
 I say that love consists in seeing a woman and 
 saying at once, ' She is the one woman for me : 
 I shall never find another. There is not another 
 like her. She is the flesh and blood realisation 
 of my dreams.' Alas ! it is often with this woman 
 as it is with a house one covets ardently, — she is 
 already let." 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, the critic and historian who had 
 been one of the first to acknowledo-e the value of 
 the de Goncourts' studies on the Eighteenth Century, 
 wrote to the brothers in the October of 1861, 
 with the view of making their personal acquaint- 
 ance, and during the eight years which followed 
 there are constant references to him in the Diary. 
 Here are the de Goncourts' first impressions of the 
 man with whom they later became so intimate : — • 
 
 "October 18. — Sainte-Beuve . . . arrived at two 
 o'clock ; he is a little, round, fsxt man, with a ruddy 
 complexion, dressed in rustic fashion — in a word,
 
 A VISIT FROM SAINTE-BEUVE 185 
 
 a silhouette a la Beranger. His forehead is lofty, 
 the top of his head is bald and shining, he has 
 goggle eyes, an inquisitive nose, a large ugly 
 mouth hidden by a kindly smile, and prominent 
 cheek-bones as round as magnifying glasses. His 
 white forehead, pink colouring, and the childlike 
 expression of the lower part of the face, suggests 
 some provincial librarian, who, living under the 
 shadow of a literary cloister, still enjoys the ex- 
 cellent Burgundy which is to be found in the 
 cloister cellars, . , . His conversation is full of 
 little delicate touches, but he never uses a full 
 brush ; and his talk reminds one of a lady water- 
 colourist's palette covered with delicate suggestive 
 tints. 
 
 " We spoke to him of his study on Louis Philippe ; 
 he replied, ' I only saw the king once, on the 
 occasion when he received Hugo, Villemain, and 
 myself as Academicians. Louis Philippe pressed 
 Hugo's hands effusively, and thanked him warmly 
 for having in his speech recalled Napoleon's judg- 
 ment of the citizen king.' 
 
 "He mentioned Sceiir Philoniene, maintaining 
 that literary work of any value must be based 
 upon the study of Nature. He said that he had 
 very little taste for work drawn simply from the 
 imaQ-ination. For this reason he takes but slig-ht 
 pleasure in the perusal of Hamilton's graceful 
 stories.'" Besides, he seriously doubts, whether the 
 ancients really set so much store by that ' ideal,' 
 
 * Memoires de Gramont.
 
 i86 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 which is now so much in vogue ; ... he maintains 
 rather that their works tended most distinctly 
 towards realism, only that their reality was finer 
 than ours. ... 
 
 " An Enoiishman, who had settled in France 
 after the Eestoration, and who lived out at Belle- 
 ville, was well known as the most hospitable of 
 men. One day, Salvandy, who had received from 
 him an invitation to dinner, found at the English- 
 man's door a gentleman evidently there for the 
 same purpose as himself. Neither of them had read 
 the address heading the letter of invitation, and so 
 were unaware that their common friend had moved 
 to Passy four months previously. The two guests 
 accordingly decided to have their dinner together, 
 though they were total strangers to one another. 
 Salvandy soon became somewhat puzzled by his 
 companion, in whom he perceived want of breed- 
 ing, and yet a certain distinction. In the middle of 
 dinner the stranger exclaimed suddenly, ' Now I 
 will sing you a little song to keep myself in work- 
 ing order ! ' It w^as Beranger. 
 
 " When we intimated that we thought the poet's 
 glory somewhat overrated, Sainte-Beuve replied, 
 ' Yes, people went somewhat far in their praise. 
 There is a man at Batignolles who sends me every 
 fortniofht verses in honour of the sinQ-er of Lisette . . . 
 it has become quite a mania with him. . . . There 
 are runs of luck and ill-luck like this in France. . . . 
 Bdranger's great strength lies in his descriptions 
 of the life of the people, but he illuminates and
 
 SAINTE-BEUVE ON BERANGER 187 
 
 idealises it all by the little delicate side-lights he 
 throws upon everything he described. He hides an 
 excessive delicacy under a somewhat coarse exterior. 
 Lamartine said he had laro^e hands : this was false 
 — he had the hands of a w^oman ! ' 
 
 "At this point the conversation turned suddenly 
 on Flaubert, and Sainte - Beuve exclaimed : ' One 
 should not take too long over a book, or one gets 
 behind the times. . . . With works like those of 
 Virgil this does not matter. But after Madame 
 Bovary, Flaubert ought to have given us studies 
 from life, works in which the subjectivity of the 
 author was brought into prominence, whereas he 
 has only given us Chateaubriand's Martyrs over 
 again. ' 
 
 " Then Sainte-Beuve enlarged upon the ennui of 
 having to skip from subject to subject, from one 
 century to another. 
 
 " ' I have work before me for three years,' he said 
 suddenly, ' unless some accident take place. Well, 
 at the end of three years I shall have made about as 
 much as one unsuccessful play would have brought 
 in : ' then, after a moment's silence, ' Ah me ! the 
 stage ! Comedy in verse is a thing of the past ; 
 either you write verses unworthy of the name, or 
 you write prose. Everything is gradually being 
 merged into the novel. There is such a vast scope, 
 and the form lends itself to everything. The 
 fiction of to-day is full of talent.' 
 
 " He left us, extending a cold, fat hand, and on 
 the doorstep stopped to say, ' Come and see me early
 
 i8S EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 in the week, after that I am obliged to keep my 
 head in a bao-.' . . . 
 
 " France feels such a longing for military glory that 
 the peaceful king (Louis Philippe) was obliged to 
 give her this glory at Versailles — in effigy. . . . 
 
 " History is true romance, fiction is history which 
 might have been true. ..." 
 
 To Flaubert. 
 
 "December 1861. 
 
 "My dear Friend, — How are you and Salammhof 
 1 have had l)ut little news of either of you. In Paris 
 you are become a legendary figure. . . . There is 
 nothing fresh to tell you of this little provincial 
 town called Paris. The Figaro still sticks pins into 
 people's calves. . . . There is some talk of putting 
 up a Latin inscription on Miirger's tombstone. If this 
 ever comes to anything, I cannot help wondering 
 how his ghost will ever find its resting-place after an 
 evening spent at the Brasserie des Martyrs. . . . 
 
 " As for us, my dear friend, we are absorbed in a 
 long important historical work. By the way, I have 
 a favour to ask of you. Would you ask some one 
 to copy at the Rouen town library two of Madame 
 de la Popeliniere's love letters to Richelieu ? There 
 is one in which she says, ' I would have my arm cut 
 off in order to have you near me.' A somewdiat 
 rare heart-cry in that stilted Eighteenth Century." 
 
 The historical work alluded to in the above letter 
 was La Femme an XVIIP"^ Siecle.
 
 A LETTER TO FLAUBERT 189 
 
 To the same, afeiv days later : — 
 
 "All! wliat a man, what a friend you are. On 
 opening your parcel I felt ashamed of myself. I had 
 no idea that those letters were so long, but as you 
 declare that copying those 'ashes of a long gone 
 love ' did not give you much trouljle, I will not be 
 too grateful. . . . According to the latest rumours, 
 Les Miserahles will certainly be published next 
 February, on the anniversary of the publication of 
 Notre Dame de Paris. ... I believe that Les 
 Miserahles will be brought out in two successive 
 volumes, but I do not know what time is to elapse 
 between each series. You ask me my advice about 
 Salammho ; I do not consider that it would be 
 impudent, but imprudent, to bring out your book 
 at the same time ; Hugo has so great a hold on the 
 critics and public. If you will have the patience to 
 wait till next November the excitement will have 
 calmed down, and your success will not follow that 
 of any one. That is what we advise. AVe know it 
 will be hard, but, on the other hand, you are so 
 patient. 
 
 " To-morrow I will go to the Bihliotheque, and soon 
 you will receive a perfect list of the various agonies 
 gone through by those who die of hunger — a very 
 unpleasant form of death, I fancy, unless one has 
 always been more or less starved from infancy. 
 Every day when dinner time approaches, I suffer 
 pangs of hunger, so I know what it must be 
 like."
 
 I90 EDMOND AND JULES BE GONCOURT 
 
 Flaubert had asked Jules de Goncourt to seek out, 
 in a medical library, a work pul)lislied by a German 
 who deliberately allowed himself to die of hunger, 
 in order that he might J3ut on record his sensations. 
 Flaubert wished to use the information when describ- 
 ing the death of the Mercenaries in Salammho. 
 
 ''January i, 1862. — To us New Year's day is 
 the day of the dead. Our hearts are chilled, and 
 we yearn for those who have passed away. 
 
 " We climbed up to a little room on the fifth 
 story, in order to pay a call on our old cousin 
 Cornelia. She was obliged to send us away, on 
 account of the influx of visitors : ladies, schoolboys, 
 young and old men, either relations or connections. 
 She was unable to offer them all seats, and she 
 had not sufficient room to wish to detain them 
 any length of time. One of the finest peculiarities 
 belonging to those of noble birth is that they do 
 not shun poverty. In bourgeois families they do 
 not acknowledge relations below a certain mone- 
 tary position, or those who live higher than the 
 fourth story. 
 
 " February 1 5. — I found myself to-day on the Quai 
 Voltaire, in the shop of l^^ance, the bookseller. A 
 man came in, bargained some time for a book, went 
 out, came back, and started bargaining afresh. He 
 was a fat, squarely built man, who strutted about 
 like a horse-dealer. He gave Rambouillet as the 
 
 address to which his book was to be sent. M 
 
 at Kambouillet.
 
 AN ANECDOTE ABOUT CHARLES X. 191 
 
 " ' All ! ' said the bookseller, whilst writing down 
 the address, ' I was there in 1 830 with Charles 
 the Tenth.' 
 
 " ' iVnd I,' declared the fat man, ' I was there 
 also. I had the king's last signature. Twenty 
 minutes before the deputation from the Provisional 
 Government arrived, I was there with my gig. 
 Ah ! he w^as very hard-up — he was selling his plate 
 and at a low price. I got twenty-five thousand 
 francs' worth for twenty-three thousand. If I had 
 arrived sooner ... he sold two hundred thousand 
 w^orth ; but then, you see, I had fifteen thousand 
 mouths to feed — his Guard, for I w^as head of the 
 Commissariat.' 
 
 " ' Ah, well ! ' cried the bookseller, ' you fed us 
 very badly. I remember an old cow which we 
 killed during the campaign.' 
 
 " Chance had thrown these two together, the old 
 soldier of Charles the Tenth's guard, and the 
 quondam head of the Commissariat who had gleaned 
 from royalty in misfortune, and bought the plate 
 of a king in the last strait. The soldier has 
 become a needy bookseller, the head of the Com- 
 missariat has blossomed out into a fat merchant 
 reeking of ease and prosperity. I looked to see the 
 title of the book he had chosen ; it was a History 
 of the crimes of the Popes. . . . 
 
 " Strange indeed are popular idolatries ! Do you 
 know how many altars were erected in honour of 
 Marat ? Forty-four thousand ! 
 
 '■^February 21. — AVe dine with Flaubert at the
 
 192 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 Cliarles-Eclmond. The conversation turned on his 
 love affair with IMadame Colet. On one occasion 
 she pursued him to the maternal roof, and asked 
 for an explanation in his mother's presence, that 
 mother who has always considered that his harsh- 
 ness towards his mistress was an insult to her sex. 
 'This is the only cloud that ever came l)etween 
 my mother and myself ! ' cried Flaubert. 
 
 " Nevertheless he admitted that he was madly in 
 love with this woman, so much so that on one occa- 
 sion the violence of his passion almost led to his kill- 
 ing her ; at the very moment that his hand was 
 raised against her he suddenly anticipated mentally 
 the scene of his trial. ' Yes, indeed,' lie said, ' I 
 actually heard the creaking of the benches in the 
 Assize Court.' 
 
 " He added that one of his grand jElithers married a 
 Canadian, and truly Flaubert's violent outbursts at 
 times suggest that he must have Red- Indian blood in 
 his veins. ... 
 
 " March 3. — We took a walk and w^ent oft' to find 
 Theophile Gautier. . . . The street in which he lives 
 is composed of the most squalid countrified buildings, 
 of courtyards swarming with poultry, fruit shops 
 whose doors are ornamented with little brooms of 
 black feathers ; just such a suburban street as Hervier 
 might have painted. . . . AVe pushed open the door 
 of a house, and found ourselves in the presence of the 
 lord of epithet. The furniture w^as of gilded wood, 
 covered with red damask, after the heavy Venetian 
 style; there were fine old pictures of the Italian
 
 THEOPHILE GAUTIER AT HOME 193 
 
 school ; above the chimney a mirror innocent of 
 quicksilver, on which were scraped coloured ara- 
 besques and various Persian characters, such a mix- 
 ture of meagre sumptuousness and faded splendour 
 as one would find in the rooms of a retired actress, 
 who had come in for some pictures through the 
 bankruptcy of an Italian manager. 
 
 " When we asked him if we were disturbing him 
 he answered, ' Not at all. I never work at home. I 
 get through my " copy " at the printing-office. They 
 set up the type as I write. The smell of the printers' 
 ink is a sure stimulant to work, for one feels the 
 " copy " must be handed in. I could write only 
 a novel in this way now ; unless I saw ten lines 
 printed I could not get on to the next ten. The 
 proof-sheet serves as a test to one's work. That 
 which is already done becomes impersonal, but the 
 actual "copy" is part of yourself; it hangs like 
 filaments from the root of your literary life, and has 
 not yet been torn away. I have always been pre- 
 paring corners where I should do my work, but 
 when installed there, I found I could do nothing. 
 I must be in the midst of things, and can work only 
 when a racket is going on about me ; whereas, 
 when I shut myself up for work, the solitude tells 
 upon me and makes me sad.' 
 
 " From there Gautier got on to the subject of 
 the Queen of Sheha. We admitted our infirmity, our 
 physical incapacity of taking in musical sound, and 
 indeed a military band is the highest musical enjoy- 
 ment of which we are capable. Whereupon Gautier 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 194 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 said, 'Well, I'm deliohted to hear that — I am 
 
 3 7 O 
 
 just like you : I prefer silence to music. I do know 
 bad music from good, because part of my life was 
 spent with a singer, but both are quite indifferent 
 to me. 
 
 " ' Still it is curious that all the literary men of 
 our day feel the same about music. Balzac abhorred 
 it, Hugo cannot endure it, Lamartine has a horror of 
 it. There are only a few painters who have a taste 
 for it.' 
 
 " Then Gautier fell to complaining of the times : 
 ' Perhaps I am getting an old man, but I begin to 
 feel as if there were no more air to breathe. What 
 is the use of wings if there is no air in which one can 
 soar. I no longer feel as if 1 belonged to the present 
 generation. Yes, 1830 was a glorious epoch, but I 
 was too young by two or three years — I was not 
 carried away by the current — I was not ready for 
 it. I ought to have produced very different sort of 
 work.' 
 
 " There was then some talk of Flaubert, of his 
 literary methods, of his indefatigable patience, and 
 of the seven years he devoted to a work of four 
 hundred pages. ' Just listen,' observed Gautier, ' to 
 what Flaubert said to me the other day : "It is 
 finished. I have only ten more pages to write ; 
 but the ends of my sentences are all in my head." 
 So that he already hears in anticipation the music of 
 the last words in his sentences before the sentences 
 themselves have been written. Was it not a quaint 
 expression to use ? '
 
 THEOPHILE GAUTIER'S DAUGHTERS 195 
 
 " I believe he has devised a sort of literary rhythm. 
 For instance, a phrase which begins in slow measure 
 must not finish with a quick pace, unless some 
 special effect is to be produced. Sometimes the 
 rhythm is only apparent to himself and escapes 
 our notice. 
 
 " A story is not written for the purpose of being 
 read aloud : yet he shouts his to himself as he 
 writes them. These shouts present to his own ears 
 harmonies, but his readers seem unaware of them. 
 
 " Gautier's daughters have a charm of their own, 
 a species of Oriental languor, deep dreamy eyes, 
 veiled by heavy eyelids, and a regularity in their 
 gestures and movements which they inherit from 
 their father ; but this regularity is tempered in them 
 by womanly grace. There is a charm about them 
 which is not all French ; nevertheless, there is a 
 French element about it, their little torn -boyish 
 tricks and expressions, their habit of pouting, the 
 shrugging of their shoulders, the irony which escapes 
 through the thin veil of childishness intended to 
 conceal it. All these points distinguish them from 
 ordinary society girls, and make clear a strong 
 individuality of character which renders them fear- 
 less in expressing their likings and antipathies. 
 They display liberty of speech, and have often the 
 manner of a woman whose face is hidden by a mask ; 
 and yet one finds here simplicity, candour, and a 
 charming absence of reserve, utterly unknown to the 
 ordinary young girl." 
 
 Theophile Gautier's daughters at the time these
 
 196 EDMOxXD AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 lines were written were still cliiklren, the eldest, 
 Judith, having been born in 1850. The great 
 journalist was devoted to his children, and they 
 were most highly educated. Judith Gautier is to 
 this day one of the chief authorities on Chinese and 
 Eastern literature in Europe. 
 
 " Flaubert was seated on a divan, his legs crossed 
 in Turkish ftishion. He spoke of his plans, his 
 ambition, and of his dream novels. He confided 
 to us the secret desire he has long cherished to 
 write a work on modern Eastern life. He imagines 
 the East as a world wdiose former bright colour has 
 given way to something sombre and mysterious. 
 He revels in the possibilities of all the antitheses 
 which his talent would present in the projected 
 volume. He would begin by describing a scene in 
 Paris, and then take his readers off to Constantinople 
 and on to the Nile, alternating between scenes of 
 European hypocrisy, and those scenes of horror, 
 such as drowning and decapitation for a suspected 
 crime without any form of trial, enacted in the far-oft' 
 countries of the East. 
 
 "Flaubert became quite merry over the pictures 
 of cosmopolitan ' canaille,^ which he proposes to 
 make gravitate around his hero ; and he discoursed 
 at length on the curious contrasts which would be 
 presented, were Eastern nations suddenly under the 
 immediate influence of civilisation, and were the 
 peoples of Europe to return to a state of barbarism. 
 From this book, of which only the outline is in his 
 brain, Flaul)ert passed on to another, of which he has
 
 AN EVENING WITH GAUTIER 197 
 
 cherished the idea for some time — a vast romance, 
 a huge picture of life, in which the various episodes 
 which so to make existence would all be related to 
 one main action. He also spoke of writing one 
 or two little stories innocent of special incidents, 
 and dealing with the eternal problems of the wife, 
 the husband, and the lover ! 
 
 " In the evening, after dinner, we made our way to 
 Theophile Gautier, who was still dining, though it 
 was nine o'clock. . . . Gautier displayed the merri- 
 ment of a child, one of the chief charms of true 
 intellectual worth. 
 
 " They rose from table and we all passed into the 
 drawing-room, . . . whereupon there was a general 
 request that Flaubert would dance the ' step of the 
 drawing-room idiot.' He borrowed a coat, turned up 
 the collar, I cannot say what he did to his hair, 
 his face, and indeed his whole appearance, but 
 suddenly he seemed transformed into a formidable 
 caricature of imbecility. Gautier, filled with a 
 wild desire to follow suit, took off his coat, and 
 with beads of perspiration standing on his fore- 
 head, began to tread with heavy steps the ' Measure 
 of the Creditor,' and the evening was brought 
 to a close with Bohemian songs and strange wild 
 melodies, contributed now and again by Prince 
 R ." 
 
 The following description of the brothers' first 
 visit to George Sand must not be accepted as their 
 final judgment on the famous writer ; for later they
 
 198 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 became very warmly attached to the authoress of 
 Consuelo : — 
 
 " March ;^o. — On the fourth floor of No. 2 Rue 
 Racine, a little commonplace man opened the door, 
 and said smilingly, ' Messieurs de Goncourt ? ' and 
 pushed open a door ; we found ourselves in a large 
 room, a sort of studio. 
 
 " We were at first only conscious of a grey shadow 
 near the window, standing out from the dim twilight 
 which was stealing into the room ; then we descried 
 the form of a woman, who remained motionless with- 
 out returning our greeting by look or sign. This 
 shadow was Madame Sand, and the man who had just 
 shown us in was the engraver Marceau. Madame Sand 
 had the aspect of an automaton : she speaks in a 
 monotonous and mechanical voice, with no inflection 
 of tone, and not a vestige of excitement. There 
 was something grave and placid in her attitude. . . . 
 Her gestures are as slow and deliberate as those 
 of a somnambulist. Suddenly she struck a wax 
 match, and we saw the lighted end of a cigarette 
 gleaming from the woman's lips. 
 
 " Madame Sand was very amiable and full of praise 
 of our work, but with a childish paucity of ideas, 
 a platitude of expression, and a dull good-nature, 
 which struck our hearts as chillily as the damp 
 bareness of a wall. Marceau made an effort to bring 
 a touch of brightness into the conversation. We 
 spoke of her theatre at Nohant, where there are per- 
 formances for the special benefit of herself and her
 
 A VISIT TO GEORGE SAND 199 
 
 maid till four o'clock in the morning. Then we 
 alluded to her prodigious capacity for work, upon 
 which she assured us that there was no merit in her 
 power of work, because it has always been easy 
 to her. She works all night, that is, from one to 
 four in the morning, and again for two hours during 
 the day : Marceau, who played the role of show- 
 man, added, ' She does not mind in the least if 
 she is disturbed. If you have a tap running in 
 your room, and any one comes in, you turn it off : 
 it is just what occurs with Madame Sand.' . . . 
 
 " When we took leave of her, she rose, gave us 
 her hand, and accompanied us to the door. There 
 we were able to see a little of her good, calm, and 
 gentle face ; the colour has died out, but the features 
 are delicately marked in the pale light of her coun- 
 tenance. None of her portraits have done justice to 
 this delicacy of outline. . . ." 
 
 "You would never guess on what bed Beranger 
 breathed his last. He died on the jointed couch 
 on which the Empress gave birth to the Prince 
 Imperial, and which was offered by the Tuileries to 
 soften the last agony of him who had sung so 
 faithfully and sweetly the glories of the great 
 Napoleon."
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 The illness and death of Eose, the de Goncourts' old servant — The 
 prototype of "Gerniinie Lacerteux " — Letters to Paixl de Saint- 
 Victor — An evening with the Gautiex's. 
 
 In the July of this year Jules and Edmond de 
 Goncourt suffered a loss by death, which had upon 
 them a singular and lasting effect. For five-and- 
 twenty years they had been served, cherished, and 
 nursed in illness by a woman to whom they were 
 attached with an almost filial respect, their mother's 
 servant Rose. After a violent pleurisy she had been 
 attacked by disease of the lungs, and Jules notes day 
 by day the progress of the malady, expressing with 
 touching insight that change which sometimes, 
 though not always, precedes the end. " She has 
 no more the same appearance, the same gestures, 
 and it seems to me that she daily puts off some- 
 what of that indefinable element which expresses a 
 living personality. Before killing outright, disease 
 brings in the strange, the unknown, the something 
 which is not your friend, creates a sort of other 
 creature, in the midst of which you must seek that 
 which you have known ; the tenderness and anima- 
 tion which exist no more." 
 
 ''July 31. — I am waiting to hear from Dr. Simon
 
 ILLNESS OF THE BROTHERS' SERVANT 201 
 
 whether old Rose will live or die. I am listening 
 for the ring of his bell, which is for me like the bell 
 which announces the return of a jury into Court. 
 ... It is over, and there is no hope, it is only a 
 question of time. How quickly she has got worse. 
 And we must yet needs smile serenely." Rose was 
 nursed in the room to which she was accustomed, 
 a small chamhre de domestique, where the doctor, 
 taking off his hat, was perforce obliged to lay it on 
 the bed. The brothers determined to remove her 
 to the fine new Hospital of Lariboissiere, built 
 in separate pavilions, and combining every possible 
 modern appliance. Jules writes in his diary how 
 he himself took her in a cab, holding her in his 
 arms upon a pillow ; she had refused an ambulance. 
 Arrived at the hospital. Rose insisted on walking 
 into the great hall, where Jules delivered her into 
 the charge of a nurse. He kissed her and went 
 away. Three days later both the brothers returned 
 to the Lariboissiere, and found Rose talking quietly 
 of the time when she would return home — in three 
 weeks at latest. 
 
 " Next Rose's bed is that of a young woman, 
 whose husband, a workman, came to see her, and 
 to whom she said, ' As soon as I can walk I shall 
 go up and down in the garden so often that they 
 will feel obliged to send me home ! ' And she added, 
 ' Does the child sometimes ask after me ? ' ' Some- 
 times ; now and again,' replied the worlonan." 
 
 On Saturday, the i6th, Rose died, and a mes- 
 senger came from the hospital at ten in the morning,
 
 202 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 to tell the brothers that they were practically a second 
 time orphaiied. 
 
 " What a blank in our home ! " writes Jules. " We 
 had felt an affection for her which had lasted twenty- 
 five years. The whole of our life was known to her ; 
 she opened our letters during our absence, and we 
 told her all about ourselves. When I was a child 
 we bowled our hoops together, and she bought apple 
 puffs for me with her own money when we went 
 out walking. She waited up for Edmond till the 
 early morning to let him in when he went secretly 
 to the opera ball. She was the admirable nurse 
 in whose hands my mother placed ours on her 
 dying bed. 
 
 " She had charge of the keys, and was responsible 
 for everything that went on; for five-and-twenty 
 years she had tucked us up in bed, and every evening 
 she allowed us to crack the same eternal old jokes 
 about her ugliness and deformity. 
 
 " And we shall never see her again ! Another will 
 move about the flat, another will wish us good- 
 day, another will be in her place in the morning. 
 It is a terrible wrench, a terrible change in our 
 life. It is one of those solemn breaks in life 
 where, to use Byron's expression, ' the Fates change 
 horses.' " 
 
 It may be imagined that neither Jules nor 
 Edmond had the courage to look upon their dead 
 nurse ; but they made themselves miserable at the 
 thought that she had died alone, perhaps in prolonged 
 pain. They were greatly comforted to learn that
 
 THE ORIGINAL OF "GERMINIE LACERTEUX" 203 
 
 tlie end had come quickly. This was told to them 
 by a kind little nun, with " a tender ugly counte- 
 nance." And they buried Rose at the Cemetery of 
 Montmartre, with psalms and prayers, and then re- 
 turned to their empty house. 
 
 Five days later came the sad awakening. 
 
 " In the midst of a dinner, saddened by talk which 
 reverted to the dead woman, Maria, who had come 
 in that evening, burst out, ' My friends, as long as 
 the poor woman lived I kept the secret. But now 
 she is under the earth, I shall tell you the truth.' 
 And we learnt about the unhappy one things 
 which took away our appetite. The whole of an 
 odious, repugnant, and lamentable existence was 
 revealed to us. Promises to pay which she had 
 signed, debts which she had left to all the trades- 
 people, the most unexpected, the most astounding, 
 the most inconceivable depths of deception." Nor 
 were pecuniary deficits the worst of the revelations. 
 The wretched woman had led two separate lives, — 
 tormented by the fear of hell on the one side, and 
 on the other by the horrible danger in which she 
 stood relative to her young masters ; dreading an 
 angry creditor, an anonymous letter ; and at last, 
 after years of deception, she broke down and died 
 from the direct effect of one of her wild excursions 
 — Rose had been indeed a living lie. 
 
 It may be said that the de Goncourts never re- 
 covered from the shock. The associations surround- 
 ing their home and their dead mother had remained 
 with the two young Parisians as the memory and
 
 204 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 the witness of a better world than that in which 
 they dwelt. Rose, whom they had loved and trusted 
 with the kind of tender household romance, of which 
 all Frenchmen are capable, poisoned for them the 
 very fountains of their youth. They never thought 
 so well of women again. 
 
 But the novel, Germinie Lacerteux, which was 
 to immortalise poor Rose's ill-fated death, was not 
 w^ritten till two years later. 
 
 To Paul de Saint-Victor, prohahly from 
 Bar-sur-Seine. 
 
 '■'■ A June Day, 1862. 
 
 "... Life here goes the same little round day 
 after day in turnspit fashion. A relation, ironically 
 bestowed on us by Providence, does nothing but 
 sing snatches of B^ranger's songs. I take my re- 
 venge on him by styling his music a tahle-d'hSte 
 dessert ! 
 
 " I smoke my pipe in a shed where there is a horse 
 and a swallow's nest, full of little beaks waiting for 
 the food so faithfully brought them by their parents. 
 The scene reminds one both of Gericault's studies 
 and a page of Michelet. Soon I will write to you 
 in our boat, and enclose a willow leaf fallen on the 
 paper as a slight touch of nature ! And Claire ? 
 Edmond is glad to hear of any new words added 
 to her repertory. I seem to see her before me in 
 her perambulator, with the sunlight streaming over 
 the road, the little cheeks and the eyes of her papa.
 
 LETTERS FROM JULES 205 
 
 What a pretty picture you two would make, happi- 
 ness harnessed to joy ! So don't forget to give us 
 news of her, and my best remembrance to the 
 mamma. ..." 
 
 To the same, afeiv days later. 
 
 " My dear Friend, — Last night I dreamed of 
 Mademoiselle Claire. She was a perfect love, and 
 talked as plainly as would have done a little girl 
 of ten. She did nothing but kiss her big godfather 
 and me. Perhaps this is how little folk communi- 
 cate with their friends ; they send them dream kisses 
 during the night. . . . Yes, I quite agree with you, 
 there is something of Shakspere in Marivaux ; a 
 breath of ' As You Like It ' seems to pass through 
 the brocaded skirts of his heroines. It is a strange 
 thing, but the two most French poets of that ideally 
 French eighteenth century, Marivaux and Watteau, 
 possess something of the grace, lightness, purity, and 
 beauty of the great master." 
 
 The brothers returned to Paris early in August. 
 
 "■August 31. — We received, a few days ago, a 
 little printed sheet, upon which we found the follow- 
 ino- : ' Gentlemen, you are requested to take part 
 in a small family gathering, which will be held 
 at Neuilly, 32 Rue de Longchamps, on the 31st of 
 August, 1862.' 
 
 " We responded to this invitation, and found
 
 2o6 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 ourselves in Rue de Longchamps amongst twenty- 
 five or tliirty guests. The dramatic performance 
 was to take place in Mesdemoiselles Gautier's room. 
 There were a stage, a curtain, and footlights, to say 
 nothing of all the arm-chairs and seats in the house ; 
 the mantelpiece served as balcony stall. Over the 
 door was stuck the play-bill. 
 
 "Theatre de Neuilly, 
 Pierrot Posthume. 
 
 "The canvas rose on a scene painted by Puvis 
 de Chavannes. . . . The whole Gautier family 
 composed the dramatis personae ; Judith, in the 
 Esmeralda costume of Italian comedy, displayed a 
 languid grace ; little Estelle, looking very slight 
 in her harlequin costume, her little dark face spark- 
 ling with childish glee ; Gautier's son appeared as 
 a somewhat passionless Pierrot, and, if one can use 
 the expression, seemed a trifle too ' posthume.' 
 Then Gautier, as the doctor, was a truly marvellous 
 Pantaloon, so painted, rouged, and bedaubed that 
 he would have frightened away all the diseases 
 enumerated by Diafoirus, with bent back and 
 wooden gesture, fetching his voice from the un- 
 known region of his body, a voice not his own 
 but hoarse, of falsetto effect, which might well be 
 that of a cackling Eabelais."
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 A meeting with Sainte-Beuve — Conversation with the author of Volupte 
 — The Magny dinners — Publication of La Femme au XVIII'^^ 
 Siecle — Princess Mathilde Bonaj^arte — Robespierre as poet — 1863 — 
 Jules de Goncourt's love of children — Turgueniev — A visit to 
 Montalembert — Madame Sand at Nohant — Flaubert's Norman 
 home — A call on M. and Mme. Michelet, 
 
 During the November of this year the de Gon- 
 courts renewed their acquaintance with the critic, 
 Sainte-Beuve, then at the height of his literary 
 fame and power ; and although he must have been 
 in many ways strangely out of sympathy with the 
 enthusiasms and aims of the two brothers, he 
 became intimate with them, and was the means of 
 their making many valuable acquaintances. 
 
 " November 8. — We dined with Gavarni. 
 
 "... The author of Volupte (Sainte-Beuve) 
 arrived in a costume which might be that of a 
 little country shopkeeper out on the spree ; he took 
 from his pocket a black silk skull-cap, and pro- 
 ceeded to put it on, in view of possible draughts. I 
 mentioned his articles in the Constitiitioimel. ' Yes,' 
 he said, ' I hope to go on during the next twenty 
 months to the end of my agreement. I have a 
 certain facility for passing from one subject to 
 
 207
 
 2o8 - EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 aiiotlier, yet this is really the most trying part 
 of my work. I lectured at Liege three times 
 a week ; I had a course for four years at the 
 "Primary" School. I gave twenty-two lectures on 
 Bossuet. On these occasions I give out all I know. 
 I turn my notes inside out, I empty my bag, and 
 even though I come to the last of my cartridges, 
 I still let them off. To tell the truth, I am worn 
 out, or rather disgusted. All these insults and 
 calumnies for a WTctched little honour unworthy 
 the name — and which is notwithstanding so mightily 
 prized.' " 
 
 This is in allusion to a newspaper, wdiich, in an 
 article announcing that the critic had received an 
 invitation to one of the Compiegne country parties, 
 accused him of treachery to a friend. 
 
 The conversation turned on the eiohteenth cen- 
 tury. " It is the time about which I care most," 
 cried Sainte-Beuve. " To my mind there was 
 never a finer period than that of the first fifteen 
 years of the reign of Louis XIV. What men there 
 were then ! Even those not of the first intel- 
 lectual rank, Rivavol, Chamfort : do you remember 
 the clever mot of the former ? ' Blasphemy is an 
 indiscretion.' Hum, hum." 
 
 This habit of hemming and hawking has become 
 quite characteristic of Sainte-Beuve, and serves to 
 connect the expression of his thoughts. " Hum, 
 hum" he repeated constantly, and then went on 
 again. 
 
 " And all the talkers of that day possessed a philo-
 
 CONVERSATION WITH SAINTE-BEUVE . 209 
 
 sopliy with which we shoukl do well to iml^ue our- 
 selves. There was no question of the immortality 
 of the soul, and subjects of that kind ; one lived 
 in the best way one could, doing good, and not 
 despising the material. Now we take too much 
 religion, too strong a dose of it. Besides, in those 
 days they had real society — society, which is, after 
 all, man's best invention." 
 
 He then passed on to Michelet, of whom he spoke 
 with animosity and vindictiveness. "To-day, his 
 style may be termed vertical ; he no longer puts in 
 any verbs. But he is a god and has his devotees. 
 His first volumes are no better than the rest, and the 
 last are only tolerated for the sake of the first." 
 
 The great charm of Sainte-Beuve's conversation 
 lies in his extremely delicate mode of touching on his 
 subjects. " You find no loftiness of style, no gran- 
 deur of expression, none of those striking images 
 which call up a mental picture. His sentences 
 are sharp and polished, and he passes rapidly from 
 one subject to another : his conversation at times 
 resembles a fine rain of words, giving minute and 
 lengthy descriptions by means of super-position : 
 ingenious, witty, but superficial, it is full of grace, 
 and sparkles with epigram." 
 
 The good impression seems to have been mutual, 
 for a few days later Sainte-Beuve wrote to Jules 
 de Goncourt for the advance sheets of the brothers' 
 forthcoming work, La Femme au XVIir""' Steele, 
 in order that he might review it in the Constitu- 
 tionnel. 
 
 VOL. I. O
 
 2IO EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 - On the 2 211(1 of November took place the first 
 of the fortiiiglitly literary dinners, destined to 
 become so fLimous, in the Restaurant Magny, a com- 
 paratively humble little eating-house in the Rue 
 Contrescarpe. 
 
 Gavarni and Sainte-Beuve together founded the 
 Magny dinners, which, originally organised with a 
 view to bringing together a few friends at regular 
 intervals, soon grew into important gatherings, in 
 which took part successively Gautier, Flaubert, 
 George Sand, Renan, Taine, and Zola. Now and 
 again a distinguished " outsider," Turgueniev, for 
 instance, was bidden to a Magny dinner, but some 
 half-dozen men of letters, among whom were the 
 de Goncourts, formed the staple of the company. 
 
 According to their invariable habit, much of 
 the talk which went on round la table de Magny 
 was recorded by the Ijrothers in their diary, and 
 this led, as will be seen later, to a serious breach 
 between ]\I. Edmond de Goncourt and Ernest 
 Renan. 
 
 Durino; the late autumn of 1862 the de Gon- 
 courts published La Femme au XV IIP"' Siecle. 
 This volume was intended to form part of a larger 
 history of the epoch to be brought out in four 
 volumes : 3Ian, Woman, The State, and Paris. 
 Only one volume saw the light, and Sainte-Beuve 
 paid La Femme au XVIIP"'^ Siecle the compli- 
 ment of making it the subject of two successive 
 Lunclis. 
 
 Leaving on one side the often-repeated anecdotes
 
 ED.MOKD DE GONCOURT 
 Bust by Lenoir, 1890
 
 "LA FEMME AU XVIII'^'^'^ SIECLE" 21 r 
 
 and descriptions which are copied from one historian 
 by another, the brothers had taken the most minute 
 pains to find and make use of any autograph letters, 
 pamphlets, almanacs, drawings, paintings, relics, 
 handbills, which could throw a light on the social 
 domestic life of the French woman of the eifrhteenth 
 century. The book was dedicated to Paul de Saint- 
 Victor, who, reviewing it in the Presse, noticed the 
 extraordinary change which had come over the 
 outward aspect of the feminine world. " History 
 makes and re-makes women in its own images. 
 In a correct speech she sculptures classic divinities 
 out of a single block : in more free and easy times 
 she chisels out little fantastic statuettes. Look 
 at the women of Louis XIV. 's reign. Their 
 symmetrical beauty seems to illustrate the rule of 
 the Three Unities : they possess large noses, broad 
 foreheads, striking features, ample figures. Under 
 the Regency, faces are rounder, noses smaller, chins 
 more delicately prominent, the fashions of the day 
 giving the women a doll-like appearance." 
 
 The authors carry their readers up to the edge 
 of the Revolution, after which, the domination 
 of La Femme cm XVIIP"^ Steele (meaning the 
 woman of the upper classes), came to an end. 
 " The patches slipt off" the cheek, the sparkling 
 glances faded, and the Watteau fans were folded 
 for evermore." 
 
 Of the women of the middle classes, the bourgeoises 
 of the eighteenth century, the de Goncourts give a 
 more serious picture, and prove the extraordinary
 
 212 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 industry and research the writers must have brought 
 to bear on all their historical studies : no indica- 
 tion was too slight, no clue too difficult to follow, 
 if there was hope of adding to their knowledge of 
 the subject they were treating ; and, as Michelet once 
 observed, out of the de Goncourts' historical works 
 might have been built up several reputations. 
 
 ''November 27. — In these days it is not enough 
 to write a book, you must make yourself its servant, 
 run about after it, and constitute yourself, so to 
 speak, the lackey of its success. I carry my books 
 here and there, to some who will only half cut 
 them, to others who will speak of them without 
 reading them, or who will exchange them at a 
 second-hand bookseller's for the price of a dinner. 
 . . . How curious a physiology could be constructed 
 from men of letters if they were judged by the 
 appearance of their house-porter, of their staircase, 
 of their door-bell, and of their home. Generally 
 I have noticed in almost all cases a sort of logical 
 link and intimate correlation between the shell 
 and its inhabitant — between the man and his sur- 
 roundings. The man of letters generally lodges 
 at the top of the house, on the fifth floor. You 
 will find the brain of Paris lodged, as it is in men, 
 in the upper regions, the legs or instruments of 
 movement are found in the entresol . . . and the 
 organs of dioestion on the first floor : a house is 
 like a human being. 
 
 ''December i. — We went to thank Sainte-Beuve
 
 AT DINNER WITH PRINCESS MATHILDE 213 
 
 for his article. . . . He lives in the Rue Montpar- 
 nasse. The narrow door was opened to us by his 
 liousekeeper. We w^ere shown up into his bedroom, 
 which, with its great bookcases, curtainless windows, 
 and paper-laden table might be that of a Benedic- 
 tine monk thrown bv fate into a common lodg-ino;- 
 house. . . . 
 
 '''' December 3. — I received, with a charming note 
 full of compliments on our work, an invitation to 
 dinner from Princess Mathilde. 
 
 "We w^ere shown into a round drawing-room, 
 hung wdth panels of purple silk. Gavarni, Chenne- 
 vieres, and Nieuwerkerke had already arrived, and 
 then the Princess appeared with her reader, Madame 
 de Fly. We sat down, seven in number, to table, 
 and but for the gold j^late engraved with the Im- 
 perial arms, and the gravity and impassive de- 
 meanour of the footmen, one would scarcely have 
 imagined oneself to be in the presence df'Voyalty, 
 for in this agreeable house there is complete liberty 
 of mind and speech. 
 
 " Princess Mathilde's salon is essentially the true 
 salon of the nineteenth century . . . with a hostess 
 who is a perfect type of the modern woman of the 
 world. A woman as kindly as her smile — the broad 
 sweet smile of an Italian mouth — and possessing, 
 by virtue of her natural mode of speech, her bright 
 vivacious tones, and her adoral^le simplicity, the art 
 of at once putting you at ease. 
 
 " To-day, among all these men, she w^as delight- 
 fully simple and charming, bemoaning in a pretty,
 
 2 14 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 ^vitty fashion the level to which women have sunk 
 since the eighteenth century, and the annoyance she 
 experiences in finding so few of her sex taking any 
 interest in art, or in the newer literature. She declared 
 she can rarely converse with the women she meets. 
 ' If one of my own sex were to come in now, 1 should 
 be forced to change the conversation : presently you 
 will see that for yourselves. I am willing to receive 
 all the intelligent women of the day ... I would 
 have gladly received Mdlle. Eacliel, and I will invite 
 Madame Sand whenever you please ! ' " 
 
 Few of the women of our time have led so 
 strangely chequered a life as has Princess Mathilde. 
 The only daughter of the King of Westphalia (Jerome 
 Bonaparte) and Caroline of Wiirtemberg, she is 
 allied through her mother with most of the reigning 
 Royal houses in Europe, and may be said to be 
 the only member of the Bonaparte family who has 
 retained the permanent liking and respect of the 
 French nation. 
 
 She married, at the age of one-and-twenty, Prince 
 Demidoft', a wealthy Russian nobleman, but after 
 four years of far from happy union, the husband and 
 wife agreed to lead separate existences, the former 
 in Russia, the latter in Paris, where her great 
 beauty and rare mental power soon won her a 
 considerable position in the social and intellectual 
 w^orld. 
 
 Princess Mathilde from childhood cherished a deep 
 affection and veneration for the great chief of her
 
 PRINCESS MATHILDE BONAPARTE 215 
 
 father's family ; she has never forgotten she was nee 
 Bonaparte, and when Louis Napoleon, in 1848, was 
 elected Prince President, he found his cousin more 
 than willing to throw her influence, which was even 
 then considerable, on his side, and until his marriage 
 to Mademoiselle Eugenie de Montijo, she acted as 
 the virtual mistress of his successive presidential 
 and imperial establishments. 
 
 Since the year 1847, wdien she first took up her 
 residence in France, Princess Mathilde has been the 
 centre of an unique literary and artistic society, and 
 has never allowed political or religious creeds to 
 interfere with her many intellectual friendships, 
 with two notable exceptions ; her breach with Sainte- 
 Beuve, and her quarrel with Taine, for she never 
 forgave the latter his one leaflet on Napoleon I. 
 
 The publication, after his death, of her corre- 
 spondence with Sainte-Beuve — Lett res de la Prin- 
 cesse — gave rise to considerable comment, for what 
 had occurred was well known to the French world 
 of journalism and letters ; but of his quondam royal 
 friend the critic left an imperishable description : — 
 " La j^hysionomie entiere exprime nohlesse et dignite, 
 et des quelle s'anime, la grace unie a la force, la 
 joie qui nait d'une nature saine, la franchise et 
 la honte." 
 
 Princess Mathilde used to be called by de Morny 
 " the man of the family ; " and she retained to the 
 end of his life a great influence over Napoleon III. 
 She spent the year 1871 in Belgium, only leaving 
 Paris after the historic 4th of September, and driving
 
 2i6 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 openly out of tlie city en Altesse. After a sliort exile 
 she once more returned to Paris and took up the 
 broken threads of her old life. 
 
 At Saint Gratien, the fine chateau which has been 
 for the last forty-five years her country house, 
 Princess Mathilde has entertained generations of 
 artistic and literary personalities, since the far-off 
 days when she first made the acquaintance of the 
 authors of La Fcmme au X VHP"' Siecle. Edmond 
 de Goncourt is now one of her oldest and most valued 
 friends : together they have seen many great repu- 
 tations rise and disappear, and of the brilliant circle 
 gathered round the Princess in 1862, perhaps he 
 alone remains to remind her of the days when she 
 was not the least important member of a great 
 dynasty, and when her womanly tact and charm 
 acted as a restraining hand on many who might 
 have otherwise adopted Victor Hugo's attitude to 
 the Third Empire. 
 
 " Decemher. — A Saturday Magny Dinner. Sainte- 
 Beuve once knew at Boulogne an old librarian named 
 Isnard, who had l)een professor of rhetoric in the 
 Oratorian school at Arras. Eol:)espierre had been his 
 pupil, and he used to tell of how the latter, having 
 become a briefless barrister, and time hanging heavy 
 on his hands, had taken to writing poetry. His first 
 literary effort concerned ' The art of spitting, and 
 of blowing one's nose ; ' but Robespierre's sister, fear- 
 ing lest the publication of this poem should lose him 
 what small practice he had, sought out Isnard, and
 
 JULES DE GONCOURTS LOVE OF CHILDREN 217 
 
 consulted liim as to the means of delaying the publi- 
 cation. Accordingly, Isnard asked Robespierre to 
 read him the poem, and observed, ' Good, very good 
 indeed, but you must polish, you must polish.' 
 
 " Finally the Revolution bore off Robespierre from 
 this same polishing, and the poem was never pub- 
 lished." 
 
 ''January i, 1863. — To-day we are feeling sad at 
 heart, added to which is the humiliation of dining 
 at a restaurant. There are days in the year when, 
 at six o'clock joi'ecisely, the possession of a family 
 seems desirable. . . ." 
 
 i 
 
 Perhaps in order to fill up this void, Jules, whose 
 great love of children constantly peeps out in his 
 correspondence, spent a portion of his New Year 
 evening in writing to a small playfellow, who must 
 have treasured up the long epistle with care, for 
 thirty-one years have come and gone since the 
 following was written to Mademoiselle Juliette 
 Marcille : — 
 
 "Paris, January i, 1863. 
 
 " My dear Mademoiselle Juliette, — Do you re- 
 member how kind you were to me when I came to 
 see you in your country home? I hope you have 
 not forgotten me. It is true that when you came 
 to see me with your uncle, I thought you seemed 
 somewhat indifferent, for you disappeared into the 
 dining-room to play with the lamp shade, notwith- 
 standing the fact that you might have thus dirtied your
 
 2i8 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 little hands. But after you liad gone it occurred 
 to me that as men of letters do not always shave, 
 I may have seemed less good-looking than usual. 
 If this was the case, please forgive me, and accept 
 as a peace-offering the contents of the hamper w^hicli 
 I am sending you. 
 
 " I have for your sake spent the wdiole day 
 haunting all the penny-toy booths. I feel sure 
 you are too kind to wish to keep everything I am 
 sending you for yourself, so share the collection 
 with your sisters, and even allow your mamma to 
 choose any little thing she might find useful in 
 the house. There is, however, one thing I should 
 like you to keep, that is, a volume of stories written 
 by my friend, M. de Chennevieres, for his children. 
 
 " I beg you to receive, together with the hamper, 
 dearest little lady, the expression of my devotion 
 and sympathy, and I beg of you to always consider 
 me your very humble servant and playfellow^ 
 
 "Jules de Goncourt. 
 
 " P.S. — My brother, who is older and more 
 reasonable than I am, begs to be remembered 
 to you. 
 
 '' F.P.S. — Do not tell your parents; but all the 
 toys I have sent you are made to be broken." 
 
 ''January 17. — Sainte-Beuve told us something of 
 his recollections of Madame Recamier, and sketched 
 one of the figures who haunted her salon — old 
 Forbin-Janson. He would be met on the staircase,
 
 FLAUBERT'S MATERNAL GRANDFATHER 219 
 
 carried by a servant and looking like a shadowy 
 ruin, a man at liis last gasp ; but as soon as the 
 door opened, and the maid appeared, just as if some 
 spring had been touched, a smile suddenly illumi- 
 nated his face, and he entered the room with quite 
 a grand air, bowing gallantly, and coming out now" 
 and again with some fairly witty sally, to which 
 Madame Eecamier would call attention. 
 
 " He then passed on to Ampere, of whom he saw 
 a great deal, and who came to pay him a visit almost 
 every morning, at a time when he himself, seized 
 with a fit of hatred towards society, had immured 
 himself in the Hotel du Commerce. He represented 
 Ampere in his various capacities, as the ' cavaliere 
 servante ' of Madame Recamier, as the classical 
 ' patito,' the typical academic showman, and as 
 the guide of would-be literary women. . . . 
 
 " January 26. — Flaubert told me lately the story 
 of how his maternal grandfather escaped the guillo- 
 tine. The worthy old man was a country doctor, and 
 when shown in an inn an account of the execution 
 of Louis XVL, could not help weeping ; he was just 
 al)out to be sent off" to the Revolutionary Tribunal, 
 when he was saved by his seven-year.-old son, whose 
 quick-witted mother had taught him to recite a 
 pathetic, and it is to be supposed republican discourse, 
 which was listened to with great satisfaction by the 
 authorities. . . . 
 
 " February 9. — Yesterday we were in the Princess 
 Mathilde's salon; to-day we went to a popular ball 
 at ' L'Elysee des Arts,' on the Boulevard Bourbon.
 
 220 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 I love these contrasts ; one sees tlms all the various 
 stories which build up the edifice of society. . . . 
 
 ''February 14. — Our Saturday dinners are really 
 delightful. The talk leaps from one thing to 
 another, and each contributes his quota. 
 
 " Victor Hugo's name was suddenly flung into the 
 conversation. No sooner was it pronounced than 
 Sainte-Beuve started as if he had been bitten by 
 some animal under the table, and declared that 
 Hugo is a charlatan, the first man who specu- 
 lated in literature. Whereupon Flaubert observed 
 that he is the only man in whose skin he would 
 gladly find himself. ' No, no,' answered Sainte- 
 Beuve, justly enough, ' one would never wish to 
 give up one's own personality — one might desire 
 to appropriate certain qualities l)elonging to an- 
 other, but only while remaining one's own individual 
 self.' 
 
 "Then he softened, and admitted the great initia- 
 tive power possessed by Victor Hugo. > ' Yes,' he 
 added, ' it is he who first tauo-ht me to write verse, 
 and one day in the Louvre he instructed me on the 
 subject of painting, and taught me all that I have 
 since forgotten. . . . He has a marvellous tempera- 
 ment, has Hugo. His barber once told me that the 
 hair of his head was three times as strong as that 
 of any other man, and blunted all the razors. He 
 has the teeth of a wolf, teeth which could crush 
 peach stones. And what eyes ! Why, when he was 
 writing his Feuilles cVAutomne, we used to go up 
 the towers of Notre Dame each evening to see the
 
 A TALK WITH TURGUENIEV 221 
 
 sunset ; well, from that height he could distinguish 
 the colour of Madame Nodier's dress, when she was 
 sitting on the balcony of the Arsenal.' . . . 
 
 ^^ February 23. — Magny Dinner. Charles Edmond 
 brought Turgueniev, the author of ' A Russian 
 Hamlet,' a w^riter of delicate talent. 
 
 "He is a charming colossus, a gentle white-haired 
 giant, who looks as if he were the good genie of 
 some mountain or forest. He is strikingly hand- 
 some, with deep sky-blue eyes, and his speech 
 possesses all the charm of the Russian accent, an 
 accent which has about it a touch of both baby and 
 nigger language. 
 
 " Touched and reassured by the ovation he re- 
 ceived, he began to tell us many strange things 
 about Russian literature, which he declared to be 
 on the hiofh road to realism — both the novel and 
 drama. He informed us that Russians are great 
 magazine readers, and confessed shamefacedly that 
 he and some ten others are paid at the rate of 
 600 francs {£24.) the serial chapter. On the other 
 hand, novels in volume form are ill paid, each 
 bringing in at the utmost 4000 francs (^160). 
 
 "On hearino; Turgueniev mention the name of 
 Henri Heine, we all declared our admiration for the 
 German poet, but Sainte-Beuve, who said he knew 
 him well, cried out that he was a good-for-nothing 
 wretch, and a rogue. In response to the general 
 ' tolle,' he hid his face in his hands till our eulogium 
 was over. . . . 
 
 " A witty saying of old Rothschild's. Calvet
 
 222 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 Eognat asked him what had caused the late fall 
 in Government securities ? 
 
 " ' How should I know ? if I could only explain 
 the reason of these fluctuations, I should have made 
 my fortune long ago.' 
 
 '' Aiyril 29. — JVr. de Montalembert wrote to ask us 
 to come and talk with him about our book on 
 La Femme au XV I IP"' Slecle. 
 
 " On the table of the drawino-room was an Italian 
 translation of the biography of Pere Lacordaire, the 
 fables of Comte Anatole de Segur, and under the copy 
 of Peruoino's Marriaoe of the Viroin, which hung 
 over the piano, was an arrangement for burning 
 a lamp or a taper. There were also on the walls 
 designs for painted windows, and a horrible high 
 relief of Saint Elizabeth and the Miracle of the 
 Eoses, whilst against the light l)etween the windows 
 appeared the Eagle of Poland, embroidered in em- 
 bossed silks, surrounded by a crown of thorns upon 
 a background of amaranth-coloured plush, and sur- 
 mounted by the words, ' Offered by the Ladies of 
 Great Poland to the author of "A Nation in 
 Mourning," 1861.' 
 
 " M. de Montalembert took us into his j^i'ivate 
 study with smooth civility. In giving us his hand 
 he drew it to his heart. His voice, as I think we 
 said before, is slightly nasal, but the speech is 
 easy, the diction witty, and the malice extremely 
 playful. 
 
 " After paying us some compliments on our work, 
 he asked us why we have not touched on provincial
 
 A VISIT TO MONTALEMBERT 22 
 
 o 
 
 virtues, and dealt with the social life of the province, 
 of that special, clearly defined, characteristic life, 
 chiefly led formerly in Parliamentary towns such as 
 Dijon, but now completely extinct. ' Yes,' he went 
 on to say, ' the province no longer sends for books to 
 Paris ; nobody reads ; when neighbours come to visit 
 me in the country, I give them books, but nobody 
 opens them.' Then he spoke to us about Sainte- 
 Beuve's article upon our book, and told us that in 
 this very room Sainte-Beuve often came to talk with 
 him in 1848, confessing that it was with a view of 
 studying him — ^Montalembert, — and asking him how 
 he managed his speeches in public. Sainte-Beuve 
 then took note of the conversation, rubbing his 
 hands gaily together. ' I have known Sainte-Beuve 
 in many phases — first as an idolater of Hugo at 
 home, writing there his best verses, verses dedicated 
 to Madame Hugo ; then as a Saint Simonian ; then 
 as a mystic apparently upon the verge of becoming 
 Christian, and now as very had. Do you know 
 that the other day at the Academy, apropos of the 
 dictionary, he had the audacity to say, touching 
 his forehead, " Now really, do you think that we 
 have inside here anything else than a secretion of 
 the brain ? " This is materialism pushed further 
 than has yet been known except among some of 
 the doctors. There is amongst us rationalism and 
 scepticism, but pure materialism no longer existed 
 a few years ago. And lately, apropos of the prize 
 of 20,000 francs, and the discussion about Madame 
 Sand, did not Sainte-Beuve say that marriage was
 
 224 EDMONl) AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 a condemned institution, and would soon be put an 
 end to ? ' 
 
 '''March i ith. — The Magny Dinner. We were all 
 present, with two new guests, Gautier and Neftzer, 
 our visitors. 
 
 " The conversation turned on Balzac. Sainte-Beuve 
 attacked the great novelist. ' Balzac is not true to 
 life ; I admit he is a man of genius, but he is also a 
 monster.' 
 
 " ' Then are we all monsters ? ' cried Gautier. 
 ' Who else has painted a picture of our own time ? 
 Where will you find such a reconstitution of society. 
 If Balzac has not shown it to us, who has '? ' 
 
 " ' I grant the imagination, the power of invention,' 
 continued Sainte-Beuve bitterly. ' But where will 
 you find truth to life ? In the novels of Madame 
 Sand ? ' 
 
 " ' Well,' observed Renan, who was sitting next 
 to me, ' I consider Madame Sand ftir more true to 
 life than Balzac ! ' 
 
 " ' No, really ? Yes, she deals with natural 
 passion.' 
 
 " ' And then Balzac's style,' exclaimed Sainte- 
 Beuve, ' it is a twisted and involved style.' 
 
 " ' Gentlemen,' said Renan, ' in three hundred years 
 Madame Sand will still be read.' 
 
 " ' Balzac is already old-fashioned and so complex,' 
 Saint- Victor continued. 
 
 " ' But Hulot,' cried Neftzer, ' is so human, so 
 superb.' 
 
 " ' The beautiful is always simple. What could be
 
 A MAGNY DINNER 225 
 
 finer than the sentiments of Homer ? They are 
 everlastingly fresh and young. Andromache, for 
 instance, will always be more interesting than Mme. 
 Marneff!' 
 
 " 'Not to me,' observed Edmond. 
 
 " ' What do you mean ? ' 
 
 " 'Your Homer only describes physical sufferings; 
 it is much more difficult to depict those that are 
 moral. I tell you frankly that the poorest psycholo- 
 gical novel is of greater interest to me than all your 
 Homer put together. I would rather read Adolphe 
 than the Iliad.' 
 
 " ' One feels inclined to fling oneself out of the 
 window when one hears such language,' shouted 
 Saint- Victor. 
 
 " His eyes looked as if they were coming out of his 
 head, for his god has been blasphemed. He stam^Ded 
 his foot and roared out : ' You are quite crazy. It 
 is inconceivable. The Greeks are beyond discussion 
 — all that relates to them is divine.' 
 
 " I remarked to my neighbour, ' You may deny the 
 existence of the Deity, you may discuss the Pope, 
 spit out abuse of anything — but Homer ! ! ! Truly 
 these literary religions are hard to explain.' 
 
 " In time the storm subsided. Saint- Victor shook 
 hands with Edmond, and dinner went on once more. 
 
 " Then what must Kenan needs do but begin to 
 explain that he is busy eradicating from his book 
 every touch of the language of journalism, and 
 that he is striving to write the French of the seven- 
 teenth century, according to the definite and fixed law 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 226 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 of language, wliicli ought to suffice to express all 
 feeling. 
 
 " ' You are wrong, and moreover you will never 
 succeed,' cried Gautier; ' I will point out four hundred 
 words in your book that are not of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury. You feel the inspiration of new ideas, therefore 
 these ideas must needs be clothed in new words ! How 
 about Saint Simon and Madame de Sdvigne, do you 
 believe that they wrote in the French of their day ? ' 
 
 " Gautier's fluent speech drowned all. He con- 
 tinued : ' I quite admit that in those times they 
 had quite as many words as they required. They 
 knew nothing ; it is true they had a sprinkling of 
 Latin, but no Greek ; absolutely nothing of art. 
 Did not they call Raphael the Mignard of his 
 time ? They knew nothing of history or of archte- 
 ology ! I defy you to compose the article I shall 
 write Tuesday on Baudry with only seventeenth 
 century words ! " . . . 
 
 To 2yieo2)hile Gautier. 
 
 ''April 2Sth, 1S63. 
 
 " Dear Master, — I have the honour of telling 
 you that you were last evening elected unanimously 
 a member of the Magny Dinners. 
 
 " Voters — Gavarni, Sainte-Beuve, Charles Edmond, 
 Paul de Saint- Victor, Turgueniev, Taine, Baudry, E. 
 Soulie, Edmond de Goncourt, Jules de Goncourt. 
 
 "Absent at the time of the vote — Renan, Dr. 
 Veyne, De Chennevieres, Comte de Nieuwerkerke.
 
 A MAGNY DINNER 
 
 !27 
 
 "The dinners take place every fortnight, on 
 Mondays. You will therefore be formally installed 
 on Monday, May nth (half-jDast six). A speech 
 is not obligatory. J. de Goncourt." 
 
 ''June 8. — After a violent discussion at Magny's, 
 from which I have just emerged with beating 
 heart and parched throat, I am fully convinced of 
 the following : All political discussion comes to 
 this, ' I am w^orth more than you are ! ' All literary 
 discussion, ' I possess better taste than you ! ' All 
 artistic discussion, ' I see more clearly than you 
 do.' All musical discussion, ' I am gifted with 
 a better ear than you can boast of.' 
 
 " It is rather alarming, nevertheless, to see how 
 isolated we are in all controversy, and how few 
 proselytes we make. It is perhaps for that reason 
 that God made two of us. 
 
 " June 2 2. — The Magny Dinner. 
 
 " Sainte-Beuve. — ' Madame Sand is soon about 
 to deal with an interesting subject. She proposes 
 to write something on a son of Rousseau, and his 
 life during the Revolution. It will be written in 
 a very generous tone. She is full of her subject, 
 and has sent me during the last few days three 
 letters on the subject.' 
 
 " Soulie : ' Why ! there is a vaudeville of Thdaulon 
 on Rousseau's children.' 
 
 " Rena7i : 'Madame Sand is the greatest artist of 
 our time, and possesses the truest talent.' 
 
 " The whole table—' Oh ! ah ! Oh ! ah ! '
 
 228 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 " Saint-Victor : ' Is it not strange that she always 
 writes on letter paper ? ' 
 
 " Iie7ian: ' By truth I do not mean realism.' 
 
 " Sai7ite-Beuve : 'Let us drink. . . . Come, 
 Scherer.' . . . 
 
 " Taiiie : ' Hus^o is not sincere.' 
 
 " Sainte-Beuve : ' Can you, Taine, really place 
 Musset above Hugo ? Why, Hugo can write books. 
 He achieved the greatest success of our day in 
 spite of the present powerful Government — under 
 its very nose. He has penetrated everywhere : 
 women, the people, all the world read him ; an 
 edition of his work was exhausted in four hours. 
 When I read his odes and ballads I carried all 
 my verses to him. The Globe staff used to call 
 him a barbarian. Well ! all that I have done he 
 made me do it. The Globe people had in ten years 
 taught me nothing.' 
 
 " Saint- Victor : ' Yes, we are all his disciples.' 
 
 " Taine : ' Allow me : I do not doubt that Victor 
 Hugo is an immense power, but 
 
 '^Sainte-Beuve, growing excited — ^ ' Taine, you 
 don't know Hugo. Gautier and I are the only 
 ones here who do. His work is magnificent.' 
 
 " Taine : ' The fact is, that what you call poetry 
 now-a-days means describing a belfry or a sky. . . , 
 Now, I do not call this poetry, I call it painting.' 
 
 ''Gautier: 'Taine, it strikes me you are pander- 
 ing to bourgeois idiotcy. Why do you insist on 
 the sentimental side of poetry ? Poetry consists of 
 striking words — words that pass like flashes of light
 
 GAUTIER ON HUGO'S " HERNANI " 229 
 
 and are clothed, not only with light, but with rhythm 
 and music' ... 
 
 " July 20. — Magny Dinner. 
 
 " Apropos of the book ' Victor Hugo, related by 
 a Witness of his Life,' Gautier maintained that it 
 was not a red waistcoat, but a pink doublet, that 
 he wore at the first performance of Hernani, and 
 when the whole table laughed, he added, ' But it 
 is a very important point. The scarlet w^aistcoat 
 would have indicated a shade of Republican policy. 
 Well, there was not a trace of that sort of thing. 
 We were purely mediaeval, all of us — Victor Hugo 
 like the rest. No one would have understood what 
 was meant by a Republican. Petrus Borel was the 
 only one with any tendencies of the kind. We 
 were all against the Bourgeoisie, and on the side 
 of Marchangy. We represented the machicoulis — 
 nothing more ! Why ! when T sang the praises of 
 antiquity in my preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin, 
 I nearly caused a schism. Uncle Beuve, I admit, 
 has always been Liberal, but Hugo at that time was 
 on the side of Louis XVH. Yes, I repeat it, Louis 
 XVn. The idea of telling; me that Huo;o was a 
 Liberal, or thought of such rubbish in 1828. It was 
 onlv later on that he went off into that sort of 
 thing. Why, at heart Hugo is thoroughly mediaeval ; 
 in Jersey his dwelling is full of coats of arms ! ' 
 
 " ' Gautier,' said Sainte-Beuve, interrupting him, 
 ' do you know how we spent the day of the first 
 performance of Hernani? At two o'clock I went 
 with Hugo, of whom I was the faithful Achates, to
 
 230 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 the Theatre Francais. We mounted to the very top, 
 to the skvlio-ht, and from there saw the crowd file 
 along — all the Hugo troupe. At one moment he 
 was somewhat alarmed to see Lassailly pass by, as 
 he had not given him a ticket. I reassured him, 
 and said I would be responsible. Then we dined at 
 Vdfour — downstairs, I think it was — for at that 
 time Hugo's face was not widely known.' ..." 
 
 The l)rothers, who were hard at work on their 
 new novel,* spent part of the summer of 1863 at 
 Gretz, a lonely village some miles from Fontaine- 
 bleau, even then much frequented by artists, and 
 where now and again Jules de Goncourt persuaded 
 some Paris friends to join them for a few days. 
 
 2 Paul de Saint- Victor. 
 
 ^^ August 8, 1863. 
 
 " Dear Friend, — Our not writing does not mean 
 that we have forgotten you, but only that we 
 hesitated to ask you to a village hostelry, where 
 the bedrooms are not always innocent of fleas, where 
 we eat in a whitewashed dining-room, where, in a 
 word, everything is of the country countrified. 
 However, I received your letter, so you shall be 
 given the opportunity of tasting the delights of 
 this place. 
 
 " This is how I have planned out our four days. 
 We will spend two days here seeing the ruin (for 
 
 * Renee Mmiperin.
 
 A MAGNY DINNER 231 
 
 we have a ruin), the river, &c., and this side of the 
 forest. Wednesday we will go to Foutainebleau, and 
 drive to Barbizon, Bas-Preau, &c. 
 
 " Thursday we will go over the chateau. 
 
 "Jules de Goncourt. 
 
 " P.S. — I have just inquired whether there is a 
 barber. There is one, but given the kind of place 
 this is, I fancy he will shave you with a hard-boiled 
 egg in your mouth." 
 
 "August 17. — We have returned from our intense 
 solitude to the Magny Dinner with a certain satis- 
 faction. Every one is talking of the late Eugene 
 Delacroix, whom Saint- Victor describes eloquently 
 as ' a man who looked like Tippoo Sahib's apothe- 
 cary.' 
 
 " Suddenly the critic turned pale ; we were thir- 
 teen at tal)le — yes, thirteen. ' Bah ! ' said Gautier, 
 ' only Christians count, and there are several atheists 
 present ! ' 
 
 " But he and Saint- Victor sent for Magny's school- 
 boy son to be fourteenth. 
 
 '''September 14. — -The Magny Dinner. 
 
 " There was to-day a battle royal round Thiers' 
 History, and it must be confessed that we were una- 
 nimous in condemninoj him as an historian devoid 
 of talent. Sainte-Beuve alone defended him. ' He 
 is such a charming man. He has so much wit 
 and persuasive power ! He lets you into the secret 
 of how he carries the Parliament with him, and
 
 232 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 wins over a depute ! ' This is the form of argument, 
 and tlie method of defence always adopted on all 
 occasions l)y Sainte-Beuve. You have only to say 
 to him, ' Mirabeau was a traitor,' and he replies, 
 ' Yes, but see how he loved Sophie ! ' And then 
 he will depict the passion felt by the traitor for 
 his mistress. . . . He does this for everybody, and 
 under any circumstance. . . . 
 
 " ' By-the-bye, Gautier, you have just come back 
 from Nohant, from Madame Sand's house. Is it 
 amusino- there ?' 
 
 " ' About as lively as a Moravian monastery. I 
 arrived in the evenino*. It is at some distance from 
 the railway station, and my trunk fell into a bush. 
 I W'Cnt in by the farm through a number of savage 
 dogs. I had dinner. The food is good, l)ut they 
 give one rather too much game and chicken, and 
 this does not suit me. . . . Marchal the painter 
 was there, Madame Calamatta, and Alexandre Dumas 
 
 " ' And what sort of life is lived at Nohant ? ' 
 " 'They lunch at ten. On the last stroke of the 
 hour everybody sits down to table, and Madame 
 Sand arrives with the air of a somnambulist, and 
 remains in a state of lethargy throughout the meal. 
 After lunch all adjourn to the garden, and then a 
 game of bowls wakes up the hostess. She sits down 
 and begins to chat. There generally follows a dis- 
 cussion on the question of the different pronuncia- 
 tion of words. . . . 
 
 " ' But never a word on the sul)ject of the relation
 
 GEORGE SAND AT NOHANT 233 
 
 of the sexes. I verily believe that if you made 
 the slightest allusion to such a subject you would 
 be thrown out of the house. 
 
 '"At three o'clock Madame Sand goes upstairs to 
 her " copy " until six o'clock. Then dinner — a meal 
 which is somewhat hurried, in order to leave Marie 
 Caillot more time to enjoy herself. She is the 
 servant, a ''Petite Fadette" whom Madame Sand 
 picked up in the neighbourhood to play certain 
 rdles in her plays, and who joins us in the drawing- 
 room of an evening^. 
 
 " ' After dinner Madame Sand plays Patience until 
 midnight without uttering a word. The second day 
 I announced that unless there was some literary 
 conversation I should depart. Literature ! The 
 word seems to bring them all from another world ! 
 The only subject that interests them for the moment 
 is mineralogy ; each has his or her own hammer, 
 and never g^oes out without it. To create a little 
 diversion I announced that Rousseau was the worst 
 writer of the French tongue, and this started 
 a discussion with Madame Sand, which lasted until 
 one in the morning. 
 
 " ' All the same, Manceau takes care that she is 
 provided with a forest of pens, a sea of blue ink, 
 some cigarettes, Turkish tobacco, and ruled note- 
 paper. You are perhaps aware that she sets to 
 work afresh from twelve o'clock at night till four 
 in the morning. I consider the following fact highly 
 abnormal ; she will finish a novel at one o'clock in 
 the morning, and start straight away on another.
 
 234 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 " ' It is a very comfortable house to stay in. All 
 the waiting is done very quietly. A box with 
 two openings is in the hall ; one is for the letters 
 of the house, the other for those w^iich arc to be 
 posted. In the former you place a list of all you 
 may require, with the number of your room and 
 your name. For instance, I wanted a comb ; I 
 wrote on a slip of paper my name, Gautier, the 
 number of my room, and the object I required. 
 The next morning at six o'clock I was oftered a 
 selection of thirty combs.' " 
 
 "■ Septemher 27. — A Magny Dinner. 
 
 " Speaking of de Vigny, Sainte-Beuve observed : 
 ' One can scarcely say if he was really noble — no 
 one ever saw his family, doubtless he came of 
 1 8 14 nobility; in that day one was not over parti- 
 cular. In Garrick's correspondence, you come across 
 a certain de Vigny, who asks him for a loan, but 
 in truly noble fashion, as if he had singled him 
 out to confer a favour upon him. It would be inte- 
 resting to know whether our man was a descendant 
 of his. He was quite ethereal, and had always 
 been so. You never saw such a thing as a beef- 
 steak in his house. If you left him at seven 
 o'clock to go and dine, he Avould say " What ! going 
 away already ? " He never grasped the realities 
 of life — they never existed as far as he was con- 
 cerned. His sayings were sometimes superb. One 
 day when he was coming out of the Academy a 
 friend told him that his speech had been somewhat
 
 MADAME DE PAIVA 235 
 
 long. " But I don't feel tired," was de Vigny's 
 reply. He was awkward, and never understood by 
 what combination lie had got into the " Academie." 
 If ever he proposed a candidate for a prize, he in- 
 variably ruined the latter's chance of success,' 
 
 " From the dead poet Sainte-Beuve passed on 
 to Paris salons, and described to us that of 
 Madame de Circourt, which is very eclectic, and 
 always crowded with all sorts and conditions of 
 men and women. Then he spoke of the only 
 two salons, those of the Princess Mathilde and 
 Madame de Paiva, where you meet men of 
 letters. 
 
 " Gautier broke in and descrilied the latter lady's 
 strange life and adventures. She was, according 
 to him, the illegitimate daughter of Prince Constan- 
 tine and of a Jewess, and from being a great beauty 
 had been converted into a monster by an attack 
 of smallpox. Every looking-glass in the house 
 was veiled with crape, and the child grew up 
 without knowing what she herself w^as like. She 
 was married when little more than a child to a 
 French tailor settled at Moscow. She ran away 
 from him with Hertz, who finally abandoned her. 
 Falling very ill in Paris she sent for Gautier and 
 said to him, ' You see the state I am in ; if I die 
 there is no more to be said, if I live I mean to 
 have some day the finest house in Paris.' " 
 
 ''Monday, October 19. — Three days spent at 
 Oiseme near Chartres, with the Camille Marcilles,
 
 236 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 in a house wliicli one quits with a touch of tender 
 emotion. A villa, surmounted by a studio (much 
 as if it were a chapel rising above a large Ijuilding), 
 implies that art dominates the life of the family. 
 Upstairs our eyes are rejoiced by paiutings of Prud- 
 hon, Chardin, Fragonard ; below in the garden, and 
 in every corner of the bright little house, the heart 
 is enlivened by a cordial hospitality, and all the 
 good, wholesome, honestly happy influences of a 
 home governed by duty, and where children meet 
 one at every turn. 
 
 "Oh ! what pretty little girls, and what a pleasure 
 to take them out walking, holding their tiny hands ; 
 and at night, when we went up to bed, the amusing 
 collection of little boots at the nursery door, set in 
 a row as if it were Christmas night ; and in the 
 morning, when entering the dining-room, the gay 
 and touchino; sioht of their little chairs, small, 
 smaller, smallest, according to their ages, set among 
 the seats of the big people. 
 
 " One day they made a charming picture. The 
 children were packed into a little donkey-basket 
 drawn by a poor old donkey, thumjDed by a village 
 boy, whose blouse flew behind him in the wind. 
 All laughed, shouted, jumped about ; it was a 
 cartful of happiness, and no painter there to place 
 it on permanent record." 
 
 Before his health failed, Jules de Goncourt seems 
 to have been, according to his contemporaries, gaiety 
 personified. He kept up a constant correspondence
 
 LETTER FROM JULES' CHILD FRIENDS 237 
 
 with several child friends, and the following letter, 
 written by the four little girls of whom he has left 
 so delightful a picture, gives us a glimpse of his 
 sunny, kindly nature, and real love of children : — 
 
 " Ah ! Monsieur Jules ! Ah ! Monsieur Jules ! 
 What sadness ! what sadness ! We are sad ! Juliette 
 is sad ! Marguerite is sad ! Naco is sad ! my Aunty is 
 sad ! Clementine, Mirza, all are sad ! Indeed it is 
 sadness — of the saddest ! 
 
 " Ah ! Monsieur Jules ! Ah ! Monsieur Jules ! 
 
 " No more hide-and-seek, no more blind-man's-buff, 
 no more walks, no more sugar-plums, no more games 
 of cards, no more tarts. 
 
 " Ah ! Monsieur Jules ! Ah ! Monsieur Jules ! 
 
 "Silence everywhere, silence within, silence without ; 
 silence in the fields, silence in the studio, silence at 
 table, silence in the corridors, silence all along the 
 line. 
 
 " Ah ! Monsieur Jules ! Ah ! Monsieur Jules ! 
 
 " My uncle paints my father ; we are going to pay a 
 visit to the Grandets ! We read a book of travels, 
 Loin de Paris; we are going to dine at Gourdez. 
 We receive a visit from one cure ! from two cures ! 
 from three cures ! 
 
 " Ah ! Monsieur Jules ! Ah ! Monsieur Jules ! 
 
 " In the morning we still pass before your door, 
 softly, fearing lest you should still be asleep ! But 
 at ten you are still sleeping, and at noon also, and in 
 the evening also, and at night also, and then always 
 and always !
 
 238 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 " All ! Monsieur Jules ! Ah ! Monsieur Jules ! 
 
 " In the daytime we do our lessons without 
 doing them. For we always fancy we shall hear 
 you, hear you crying out, ' Get to your desks, 
 Mesdemoiselles, get to your desks ! ' But alas, vain 
 expectation ! And while we cock our ears, four 
 ears, six ears, eight ears, the pen slips from our 
 hands, the inkpot falls on to the Hoor, the copy- 
 book follows the inkpot, and tears stream from 
 our eyes. 
 
 " Ah ! Monsieur Jules ! Ah ! Monsieur Jules ! 
 
 "At night the fricandeau is without charm and 
 without mushrooms ! We pour out our own wine 
 and water, we eat no more plum-pudding, we sit no 
 more under the shade of the trees, we walk straight 
 alono- by the side of the onion beds, and the spinach 
 borders. Then, when we come in, we take up a 
 mortally dull piece of tapestry, and we go to bed at 
 eight o'clock ! 
 
 " Ah ! Monsieur Jules ! Ah ! Monsieur Jules ! 
 
 " The nioht is still worse. For it is dark, it 
 is dark ! One tosses, one tumbles out of bed, 
 one dreams of dictation, analysis, catechism, and 
 chronology ; then all of a sudden one wakes up, 
 having heard Mdlle. Berthe call out in a ter- 
 rible voice, ' To your lessons, young ladies, to your 
 lessons ! ' 
 
 " Ah ! Monsieur Jules ! Ah ! Monsieur Jules ! 
 
 "Write to us. Monsieur Jules. Write to us all 
 together. Write to each one of us in particular. 
 Don't forget our Punchinello (a Punchinello drawn
 
 FLAUBERT AT CROISSET 239 
 
 and engraved one rainy day, and which later on was 
 placed as a frontispiece to Jules' etchings). Don't 
 forget the game of cards (le trente-et-un). Don't 
 forget Oiseme (department of the Oise). Don't 
 forget anything, don't forget everything. For all 
 of us think of you, all of us speak of you, all of 
 us love you, all of us regret your absence. All 
 of us want you to come back. All of us em- 
 brace you. 
 
 "Ah! Monsieur Jules ! Ah! Monsieur Jules ! Your 
 friends, for life, 
 
 " Marie Marcille. 
 
 " Juliette Marcille. 
 
 " Marguerite Marcille. 
 
 " Fatty, I love you. — Nacotier. 
 
 " OisfeiiE, Wednesday." 
 
 Next a visit to Flaubert and his Norman home : — 
 
 " October 29. — Croisset, a pretty homestead situated 
 half way up a hill on the banks of the Seine. 
 
 " Here we are at last in the study, which has been 
 the silent witness of so much hard work, and which 
 turned out Madame Bovary and Salammho. . . . 
 In a corner is the camp bed, covered with a piece of 
 Turkish embroidery, and heaped up with cushions. 
 In the middle of the room is the work table, a large 
 round table covered with a green cloth — the ink- 
 stand is in the form of a toad. 
 
 " Flaubert lives here with a niece, the daughter
 
 240 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 of the woman whose bust was sculptured by Pradier. 
 His mother, born in 1794, retains an old-world 
 vitality, and in the features of the old lady you 
 can still detect the remains of past beauty allied 
 with the severe dignity of old age. There is a 
 breath of provincial austerity about the house, and 
 the young girl, who spends her life between a 
 studious uncle and a grave grandmother, receives 
 their guests with kindly words, a merry twinkle 
 in her blue eyes, and a little pout of regret, when 
 at eight o'clock grandmamma wishes her son good- 
 night, and carries the girl off to her room. 
 
 ''November i. — We remained shut up in the 
 house all day. Flaubert has a horror of all exercise, 
 and his mother has positively to worry him to make 
 him go down into the garden. She told us that 
 when she returns from spending half a day in Eouen, 
 she often finds her son sitting in the same place, 
 and in the same position, as when she left him. He 
 never makes any excursion into the outside world, 
 he simply lives in his study buried in his work." 
 
 The autumn of 1863 may be said to have 
 witnessed the beginning of the two de Goncourts' 
 wider ftime. Michelet, in the preface of his work 
 on the Regency, alluded to them as follows : — " Two 
 eminent and learned writers — I. am thinking of the 
 Messieurs de Goncourt ; " and some idea of how 
 little the brothers were used to this kind of recog- 
 nition from their fellows will be gathered from the 
 following letter : —
 
 A VISIT TO MICHELET 241 
 
 To Michelet. 
 
 "October 7, 1863. 
 
 " Sir, — We should like to be able to convey to 
 you personally our thanks for the unexpected and 
 unlooked-for honour you have done us in the 
 preface of your Regence. No praise could have 
 given us greater pleasure, and we beg of you to 
 receive the expression of the gratitude, which we 
 hope to l)e able to offer you in person on your 
 return from the country. — We are, Sir, yours 
 gratefully, 
 
 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt." 
 
 " November 23. — We have been to thank Michelet 
 for the flattering; lines he wrote about us. 
 
 "He lives in the Rue de I'Ouest, at the end of 
 the Jardin du Luxeml)Ourg, in a large house which 
 mio;ht almost be workmen's dwellino;s. His flat is 
 on the third floor. A maid opened the door and 
 announced us — we penetrated into a small study. 
 
 " The wife of the historian has a young, serious 
 face ; she was seated on a chair beside the desk on 
 which the lamp was placed, with her back to the 
 window. Michelet sat on a couch of green velvet, 
 and was Imnked up by cushions. 
 
 "His attitude reminded us of his historical work; 
 the lower portions of his body were in full sight, 
 whilst the upper were half concealed ; the face 
 was a mere shadow surrounded with snowy white 
 locks ; from this shadowy mass emerged a profes- 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 242 EDMONI) AND JUT.ES DE GONCOURT 
 
 sorial, sonorous, sing-song voice, consciously im- 
 portant, and in which the ascending and descending 
 scale produced a continuous cooing sound. 
 
 " He spoke to us in a most appreciative manner 
 of our study on Watteau, and then passed on to 
 the interesting study which might Ije written on 
 French furniture. 
 
 " ' You, gentlemen, who are observers of human 
 nature,' he cried suddenly, ' there is a history you 
 should write, the history of the lady's maid. I do 
 not speak of Madame de Maintenon ; but you have 
 Mademoiselle de Launai, the Duchesse de Grammont's 
 Julie, who exercised on her mistress so great an 
 influence, especially in the Corsican affair. Madame 
 du Deffand said sometimes that there were only 
 tw^o people sincerely attached to her, d'Alembert 
 and her maid. Oh ! Domesticity has played a great 
 part in history, though men-servants have been of 
 comparative unimportance. . . . 
 
 "'I was once going through England, travelling 
 from York to Halifax. There were pavements in 
 the country lanes, with the grass growing on each 
 side as carefully kept as the pavements themselves ; 
 close by sheep were grazing, and the whole scene 
 was lit up Ijy gas. A singular sight ! ' 
 
 " Then after a short pause : ' Have you noticed 
 that the physiognomy of the great men of to-day 
 is so rarely in keeping with their intellect ? Look 
 at their portraits, their photographs ; there are no 
 longer any good portraits. Remarkal)le people no 
 longer possess in their faces anything which distin-
 
 PRINCESS MATHILDE ON NAPOLEON III. 243 
 
 guishes them from ordinary folk. Balzac had nothing 
 characteristic. Would you recognise Lamartine if 
 you saw him ? There is nothing in the shape of his 
 head, or in his lustreless eyes, nothing but a certain 
 elegance which ag;e has not affected. The fact is 
 that in these days there is too great an accumula- 
 tion of people and things, much more so than in 
 former times. We assimilate too much from other 
 people, and this being the case we lose even the 
 individuality of our features ; we present the por- 
 trait of a collective set of people rather than of 
 ourselves.' 
 
 " We rose to take leave ; he accompanied us to 
 the door, then by the light of the lamp he carried 
 in his hand, we saw, for a second at least, this mar- 
 vellous historian of dreams, the great somnambulist 
 of the past, and brilliant talker of the present. 
 
 ''^December 4. — Our novel, Renee MaiqDerin, began 
 to come out in L Opinion Nationale three days 
 ago. Our friends abstain rigorously from speaking 
 to us on the subject, and we can gather absolutely 
 no idea of what effect it is producing from the chance 
 people we meet. We were beginning to feel some- 
 what in despair over the abyss of silence into which 
 our book had fallen, when a friendly letter from 
 Paul Feval showed that the child of our creation 
 was making some stir. 
 
 '■'December 16.— The Princess said, speaking of 
 the Emperor, ' Well, well, the man is neither lively 
 nor impressionable ! Nothing upsets him. The other 
 day a servant let off a syphon of seltzer water down
 
 244 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 his neck — he simply moved his glass aside without 
 saying a word. He is a man who never gets angry, 
 and his strongest term of annoyance is, " How absurd." 
 If I had married him I should have broken open his 
 head to see what was in it ! ' " 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
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