LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO

 
 VILLIERS de lisle ADAM 
 
 HIS LIFE AND WORKS
 
 VILLIERS DE L'lSLE ADAM.
 
 VILLIERS de 1'Isle ADAM 
 
 HIS LIFE AND WORKS 
 
 from the French of 
 
 Vicomte Robertldu Pontavice de Heussey 
 By Lady Mary Loyd 
 
 London 
 
 William Heinemann 
 MDCCCXCIV
 
 All rights reserved.
 
 TO 
 
 THE EVER BLESSED MEMORY 
 
 OF THE UNKNOWN INDIVIDUAL 
 
 WHO FIRST INTRODUCED ME TO 
 
 THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE, 
 
 THIS TRANSLATION 
 
 IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED 
 
 BY MARY LOYD.
 
 TO THE READER. 
 
 HE writings of Villiers de 1'Isle 
 Adam are so little known in this 
 country, that it may not be out 
 of place, before the adventurous 
 reader embarks on the perusal of the follow- 
 ing recollections, to endeavour, in the most 
 cursory manner, to give some details concern- 
 ing them. 
 
 The most stinging satire and the most 
 radiant fancy ; the keenest appreciation of 
 nature, especially in her gloomier and more 
 mysterious moods, and a constant endeavour 
 to enforce the immutable truths of religion 
 and morality, and the inevitable results of 
 their contravention, run through all his 
 stories. And nothing more genuinely witty 
 can be imagined than some of his sketches
 
 viii TO THE READER. 
 
 of the more peculiarly Bohemian side of 
 Parisian life. The characteristic of Villiers' 
 work which must strike the thoughtful stu- 
 dent most, is its magnificent thoroughness. 
 Every one of his tales bears the impress, not 
 only of laborious preparation, but of the most 
 conscientious elaboration. So that every 
 word, as it finally stands, is indispensable to 
 the true comprehension of the author's mean- 
 ing. And this meaning, again, is almost 
 always of the highest; the satire, grave or gay, 
 good-humoured or severe, always tending to 
 the support of what is true and noble, and to 
 the punishment (or, at all events, the dis- 
 countenance) " of wickedness and vice." 
 
 The poet's immediate friends may have 
 blamed and deplored the extreme Bohemian- 
 ism into which his needy circumstances drove 
 him. We, who inherit the result of his life- 
 work a work accomplished in the face of 
 constant difficulty and discouragement can 
 have no room for any feeling but admiration 
 for the man who never published a line with- 
 out giving it the highest polish he was capable 
 of imparting.
 
 TO THE READER. ix 
 
 No modern writer, with the exception, 
 perhaps, of Edgar Poe, whom Villiers so 
 passionately admired, has his power of digni- 
 fying the horrible. And none, I believe (not 
 even Pierre Loti, that master of the art of 
 portraying nature, to the extent of making 
 his readers actually feel the heat of the sun 
 and the damp of the fog he describes), excels 
 him in calling up, and in the fewest words, 
 the beauty of an autumn sunset, the dreariness 
 of a wild winter night, the horror of a long 
 corridor in one of the prisons of the Spanish 
 Inquisition, 1 or the exotic bloom of certain 
 phases of existence in Paris. 2 Brevity, they 
 say, is the soul of wit. Truly, in this case, 
 brevity is the strength of style, and it is not 
 easy, on a first perusal, to realize the con- 
 centrated power this same well-considered 
 brevity gives to that of Villiers de 1'Isle 
 Adam. 
 
 Of his life I will say nothing. Its story 
 is unfolded in the pages which succeed this 
 
 1 " La Torture par 1'Esperance." 
 
 2 "Le Convive des dernieres Fetes," "Antonia," 
 " L'Enjeu."
 
 x TO THE READER. 
 
 note. A sad enough story it is, full of 
 struggle and failure, of brilliant hopes and 
 bitter deceptions. The history of a great 
 soul, full of that peculiar simplicity and un- 
 fitness for coping with everyday cares which 
 so often accompany genius ; and with that 
 sad and too common close, so eternally dis- 
 honouring to the public which turns a deaf 
 ear to the living charmer, charm he never so 
 wisely death in an hospital ward, followed 
 by paeans of admiration when the brave 
 heart that had vainly ached for just one 
 responsive throb was stilled in the silence 
 of the grave. 
 
 There is a growing interest among culti- 
 vated people on this side of the Channel in 
 the extraordinary development of literature 
 in its most brilliant form on the other, and 
 I feel convinced that this sketch of the life 
 and works of one who, neglected and de- 
 preciated as he was to within a few months 
 of his premature death by all but a select 
 few, is now acclaimed as one of the chief 
 glories of modern literary France, will be 
 heartily welcomed by the many sympathetic
 
 TO THE READER. xi 
 
 English admirers of our gifted neighbours, 
 and that the knowledge they may thereby 
 acquire of the great French writer's life and 
 labour will inspire them with a desire to be- 
 come acquainted with the remarkable group 
 of tales, plays, and novels on which his 
 reputation rests. 
 
 MARY LOYD,
 
 3In 
 
 HE author of the following recol- 
 leclions has passed into the silent 
 country while the sheets of this 
 translation were being prepared 
 for the press. The thought that his book 
 was about to be presented to the English 
 public helped to cheer the last months of a 
 long and trying illness. And to that public 
 I submit these pages, in the confident belief 
 that those who have the patience to read 
 them will share my admiration for the grace- 
 ful talent of their author, and will regret with 
 me that one who might yet, if he had been 
 spared, have done much invaluable work in 
 literature and literary research, should have 
 been cut off prematurely, " in the flower of 
 his days." 
 
 Eeqtmgfcat in pace,
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 First meeting Family ties Illustrious origin of 
 Villiers Genealogy of the family of L'Isle Adam 
 The old Emigre's Good King Louis XVIII. 
 and M. de Villiers Motto and coat-of-arms of 
 the family The Curd of Ploumilliau Villiers at 
 the parsonage " L'Intersigne " His parents 
 Genealogy of the De Carfort Aunt Kerinou 
 Peculiarities of the Marquis de ITsle Adam 
 His golden dream The inheritance seeker 
 The treasure seeker 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Birth of Villiers de ITsle Adam His baptism 
 His childhood Stolen by mountebanks School 
 life St. Brieuc Laval Rennes His first poem 
 His early portrait " L' Amour et la Mort " 
 Elegy Literary plans Family devotion and 
 tenderness " Our Matthias " Departure for 
 
 Paris 
 
 b 
 
 21
 
 xvi CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Paris The reign of the common-place in literature 
 The poets The defenders of the Beautiful 
 "Le Parnasse Contemporain " "Les Parnas- 
 siens " Catulle Mendes and the " Revue Fan- 
 taisiste " Triumphal entry of Villiers de 1'Isle 
 Adam First Poems Friendships Ste"phane 
 Mallarme and Leon Dierx " Claire Lenoir " 
 Appearance of Dr. Triboulat Bonhomet A few 
 words touching this personage " Le Roman 
 d'une Nuit," by Catulle Mendes Death of the 
 " Revue Fantaisiste "The Blue Dragon Hotel 
 The Rue de Douai Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, 
 according to Frangois Coppe"e 37 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Early influences Charles Baudelaire My father 
 His relations with Villiers Their intimacy 
 The Hotel d'Orleans Literary and philosophical 
 gatherings Le"on Cladel Villiers and the 
 Hegelian philosophy "Isis" The Princess 
 Tullia Fabriana Preface Eccentricities of style 
 The original of Doctor Bonhomet Doctor C. 
 "Ellen" and " Morgane " Sensations of 
 loneliness The Marquis de ITsle Adam con- 
 tinues at Paris the course of his profitable 
 financial operations The poisoner, Comte 
 Courty de la Pommerais The apartment in the 
 Rue St. Honore" The marquis Aunt Kerinou 
 Matthew's decorations 52
 
 CONTENTS. xvii 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The legend of the hoaxer hoaxed The succession 
 to the throne of Greece Villiers de ITsle Adam 
 a candidate for the throne " Le Lion de 
 Numidie " " The Moor of Venice " Nemesis 
 An imperial audience The Marquis and 
 Baron Rothschild The Due de Bassano and 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam The last aft of the 
 comedy A poet's conclusion Death of Aunt 
 Kerinou Separation 70 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 My return to Paris The Hotel d'Orleans My 
 search for Villiers Our reunion The earlier 
 stages of his lawsuit The historical drama of 
 "Perrinet Leclerc" Paul Cleves, director of 
 the Porte St. Martin Theatre The Marechal 
 Jean de ITsle Adam, according to Messrs. 
 Lockroy and Anicet Bourgeois Villiers' fury 
 Letters to the press A summons A memo- 
 randum Intervention of M. de Villiers Provo 
 cation A duel arranged Settlement on the 
 ground Result of the action Biographer's 
 reservations Documentary evidence .... 87 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Le Pin Galant, near Bordeaux Arrival of Villiers 
 with his play "The New World" The Ameri- 
 can centenary competition The character of 
 Mrs. Andrews The legend of Ralph Evandale . 116
 
 xviii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Villiers' rage against the members of the jury 
 Dramatic scene at the house of Victor Hugo 
 Villiers leaves Paris The Bordeaux theatres 
 Godefrin, director of the Theatre Frangais An 
 extraordinary reading Little Mdlle. Aimee 
 Madame Aimee Tessandier 131 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Restful days The real Villiers Villiers and the 
 fair sex Talks about bygone days Charles 
 Baudelaire His true nature His strange home- 
 life Jeanne Duval Edgar Poe Richard Wag- 
 ner " Axel " The Cabala and the occult 
 sciences Villiers' religious sentiments Quota- 
 tions " L'Eve Future " 144 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A metamorphosis An ambitious pastry-cook 
 Appearance of the newspaper, " La Croix et 
 1'Epee " Its political, artistic, and literary pro- 
 gramme Lord E W . His strange 
 
 suicide The wax figure A nocturnal conversa- 
 tion The American engineer and his master, 
 Edison First conception of "L'Eve Future" 
 Villiers de ITsle Adam and Thomas Alva 
 Edison 157
 
 CONTENTS. xix 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Villiers' absent-mindedness His terrible careless- 
 ness His departure from Bordeaux Godefrin's 
 despair A year later Bohemian poverty A 
 justification Want of money Villiers' diffi- 
 culties His pride His artistic conscientious- 
 ness Drumont's book Villiers and the young 
 Jew A good answer Villiers' manner of life 
 His midnight wanderings His dislike of day- 
 light Villiers and Anatole France 165 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 1879 The Rue des Martyrs and the Rue Roche- 
 chouart The poet's room His extraordinary 
 indifference Leon Dierx " La DeVouee " 
 Strange habits Villiers in the street The 
 Boulevard Montmartre Nocturnal declama- 
 tions Villiers as a composer Two operas, 
 " Esmeralda " and " Prometheus " Melomania 
 Villiers as a musical performer A strange 
 couple 178 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 First introduction of Wagner and Villiers at the 
 house of Charles Baudelaire Failure of "Tann- 
 hauser " at the Paris Opera in 1861 Portrait 
 and character of Richard Wagner His friends 
 and champions His intimacy with Villiers
 
 xx CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Reminiscences of his youth and early poverty 
 Augusta Holmes Villiers' visit to Triebchen 
 The "Rheingold" at Munich Villiers de 
 1'Isle Adam's artistic confession of faith . . . 202 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The marquis and the marquise Villiers' filial ten- 
 derness A monomania for speculation A letter 
 from the marquis Villiers' contributions to the 
 press The "Figaro" "La Republique des 
 Lettres " Catulle Mendes J. K. Huysmans 
 The "Contes Cruels" Two quotations Villiers' 
 high spirits His loss of illusion A study by 
 M. G. Guiches Villiers as a talker and a mimic 
 Some unpublished traits of Dr. Triboulat 
 Bonhomet Bonhomet the commander-in-chief 
 Bonhomet the ermine-hunter Bonhomet ful- 
 filling the letter of the Scriptures Bonhomet's 
 true adventures at Bayreuth The political 
 opinions of Villiers de ITsle Adam An un- 
 expected toast A rupture 219 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Fragments of a journal kept in 1879 A woman of 
 fashion bewitched Villiers and Mar Yvonne 
 A mystery Villiers a candidate at the elections 
 of the Conseil General Opinions of the press 
 Meetings The plans of the future councillor 
 My departure from Paris Our separation 
 Description of Villiers in 1880 by G. Guiches . 237
 
 CONTENTS. xxi 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Closing years Birth of a son Villiers' widow 
 Little Totor and his father Success of the 
 " Contes Cruels " Appearance of " L'Eve 
 Future" in the "Gaulois" The "Vie Moderne" 
 The murderous treatment of the " Nouveau 
 Monde " at the Theatre des Nations The deaths 
 of the marquis and the marquise J. K. Huysmans 
 "A Rebours " His opinion of Villiers' work 
 " Triboulat Bonhomet " " Propos d'au-dela" 
 " Akedysseril " " L' Amour Supreme " 
 " L'Eve Future " Lectures in Belgium Return 
 to Paris Prosperity " Histoires Insolites " 
 " Nouveaux Contes Cruels" "Axel" Sick- 
 ness Letter from J. K. Huysmans, detailing the 
 last moments and the death of Villiers Con- 
 clusion 251
 
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 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 First meeting Family ties Illustrious origin of Villiers 
 Genealogy of the family of L'Isle Adam The old 
 Emigres Good King Louis XVIII. and M. de 
 Villiers Motto and coat-of-arms of the family 
 The Cure of Ploumilliau Villiers at the parsonage 
 "L'Intersigne" His Parents Genealogy of the De 
 Carforts Aunt Kerinou Peculiarities of the Mar- 
 quis de 1'Isle Adam His golden dream The 
 inheritance seeker The treasure seeker. 
 
 NE Thursday morning in Novem- 
 ber, 1858, I was in the dining- 
 room of my father's house at 
 Fougeres. I was eating my sad 
 and solitary luncheon under the eye of a cross 
 old nurse ; and my heart swelled as I looked
 
 2 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 at the cheerful winter sun outside the window 
 panes, and thought of my brothers, more 
 fortunate than myself, who were frolicking 
 through the leafless woods which so pictu- 
 resquely crown the village of St. Germain. 
 There my grandfather lived, in an old manor- 
 house amongst the trees, and every Thurs- 
 day, according to custom, my family spent the 
 day with him. This time I had been left 
 behind, as a punishment for some childish 
 misdemeanour or some ill-learnt lesson. 
 
 Suddenly I heard the rumble of a carriage 
 on the rough pavement of our street, gene- 
 rally as silent as the grave, and soon I saw a 
 hired chaise stop before our windows. I 
 know not why my heart began to beat so fast 
 when the bell (pulled by a vigorous hand) 
 clanged noisily. A moment after, the door 
 of the dining-room opened, and a fair young 
 man with a large head, and wrapped in rich 
 furs, rushed in like a whirlwind. He vaulted 
 lightly over the table at which I was sitting, 
 and lifting me up, before I had recovered 
 from my astonishment, he kissed me heartily, 
 saying, " Good day, my little man you don't
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 3 
 
 know me ! I am your cousin Matthias ! " 
 But I did know him well ! For long he had 
 filled my childish imagination, haunted already 
 by the demon of literature. How often had 
 I listened open-mouthed, forgetful of my 
 plate, while my father recounted at the family 
 board the adventures, the oddities, the traits 
 of genius of Cousin Matthias! True, I un- 
 derstood but vaguely what my father meant, 
 but it had for me all the mysterious charm of 
 the unknown. Meanwhile the unexpected 
 guest had asked for food, having come straight 
 from Paris, without warning, as was his way. 
 I see him now, opposite me, eating heartily, 
 asking me questions, laughing at my prattle 
 (he had put me at my ease at once), and stop- 
 ping every now and then to push back with 
 his hand a thick lock of fair hair which kept 
 falling over his eyes. 
 
 " You know," said he to my astounded 
 attendant, " I am off to St. Germain, the little 
 chap with me. When / come, all punish- 
 ments are stopped." 
 
 Willy nilly, she had to wrap me in my 
 cloak and comforter ! Ten minutes later
 
 4 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 Cousin Matthias and I, seated in the little 
 hired gig, were bowling along the frosty road 
 which led from the town of Fougeres to the 
 village of St. Germain. 
 
 Such was my first never-to-be-forgotten 
 meeting with Philip Augustus Matthias de 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, then in all the bloom 
 of his youth and the first blush of his won- 
 derful genius his brow and eyes radiant 
 with those beautiful illusions, those glorious 
 dreams, which attended his entrance into life, 
 which never abandoned him in his saddest 
 hours, and whose melancholy phantoms 
 hovered over the hospital bed on which he 
 died, high-spirited to the last, hopeful and 
 resigned. 
 
 As has been seen, our families were kin. 
 But I think that the cousinship between 
 Villiers and my father, and later, by inheri- 
 tance, between Villiers and myself, was more 
 intellectual than anything else. The family 
 bond which unites us seems to me very slight. 
 It should be sought, I think, in the alliance 
 of both our families with that of De Kersauson. 
 But that is little matter. What is far more
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 5 
 
 urgent is to establish the absolutely incon- 
 testable nobility of the origin of the great 
 writer. In his lifetime a sort of mysterious 
 legendary haze gathered round his personality, 
 and I fancy he rather enjoyed deepening the 
 fog. At all events, such was his hatred of 
 all that was conventional, that his Titanic 
 dreams became historical facts concerning 
 which he would admit of no discussion. All 
 those who have heard him speak of his an- 
 cestors, of their riches, of " the stately sea- 
 beaten manor-house," in which his early 
 youth was passed, will understand, without 
 further insisting, what I mean. Yet, in those 
 rare, and for him, wearisome moments, when 
 he returned to earth, Villiers knew his family 
 history perfectly, and in its minutest detail. 
 He had studied the subject profoundly, and 
 his genius illuminated for him all that was 
 prosaic and dull in provincial and Parisian 
 archives. I know a certain work of his, 
 dealing Avith the life of the Marechal de 
 Villiers de Tlsle Adam, which is a master- 
 piece of clearness, eloquent expression, and 
 erudition. I will return to it at a more
 
 6 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 opportune moment. At present I am chiefly 
 concerned with the poet's origin. 
 
 The illustrious family of Villiers de 1'Isle 
 Adam, Seigneurs de Villiers de 1'Isle Adam 
 and de Chailly, originated in the He de 
 France. Several knights of the name took 
 part in the Crusades, others occupied the 
 highest positions about the court and in the 
 army. In fa6l, the brilliant name of Villiers 
 de 1'Isle Adam is constantly flashing across 
 the pages of our history. But the most cele- 
 brated amongst these great noblemen, too 
 well known for me to add anything to what 
 has already been written concerning them, 
 are, in order of date : Pierre, who was Grand- 
 master and Porte Oriflamme of France in 
 1355; Jean, Marshal of France in 1437; 
 and Philippe, Grand Master of the Order of 
 the Knights of Malta, the heroic defender 
 of the Island of Rhodes against Suliman in 
 1521. The nephew of this last, Francois, 
 Marquis de Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, was 
 "Grand Louvetier de France " in 1550. The 
 grandson of Francois married, about 1670, a 
 daughter of the old house of De Courson, and
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 7 
 
 settled in the bishopric of St. Brieuc, where 
 he founded the Breton branch of the Villiers 
 de 1'Isle Adam family. The grandson of this 
 last, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, married 
 in his turn, in 1780, a Mdlle. de Kersauson. 
 At the time of the Revolution, he emigrated 
 to England with his family. And here should 
 be related an incident which has an important 
 bearing on the curious lawsuit brought by 
 Villiers against the descendants of the come- 
 dian Lockroy, an action of which I shall give 
 the details when I come to that part of the 
 poet's life in which it occurred. 
 
 At the time of the Revolution the house 
 of De 1'Isle Adam had greatly declined from 
 its ancient splendour. I will not go into the 
 causes of this change ; suffice it to say, that 
 when the naval officer emigrated with those 
 belonging to him, his income barely sufficed 
 for the strictest necessaries of life. It follows, 
 that once established abroad, he did not for 
 sometime attempt to return. Meanwhile, the 
 Bourbons having returned to France, all the 
 so-called servants of the august exiles were 
 clamouring for the reward of their services.
 
 8 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 A certain Mons. de Villiers Deschamps, a 
 rich man, and an excellent royalist, asked 
 permission to revive the name of De 1'Isle 
 Adam, which he affirmed to be completely 
 extinct, and to which a distant relationship 
 gave him a claim. Good Louis XVIII., 
 delighted with a petition which would cost 
 him nothing but a signature, granted without 
 hesitation the prayer of his loyal subject. 
 Thus it came about, that until the day when 
 its luxurious peace was disturbed by the poet's 
 inopportune interference, the family of De 
 Villiers, all unconscious of the fraud, bore an 
 illustrious name and a famous coat-of-arms to 
 which it had no earthly title. 
 
 As I have spoken of the arms of the De 
 Villiers, this may be the proper place to 
 describe them : " D'or au chef d'azur charge 
 d'un dextrochere vetu d'un fanon d'hermines." 
 Mottoes : " Va oultre ! " and also " La main 
 a 1'ceuvre." 
 
 All those familiar with Villiers de 1'Isle 
 Adam and his wonderful books, will recog- 
 nize that these two proud mottoes seem to 
 have been made for him.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 9 
 
 " Va oultre ! " " Go fonvard ! " This is what 
 he always did. His clear, prophetic glance 
 piercing the heavens, and reaching in its 
 impetuous and aspiring flight far beyond the 
 horizon of ordinary human thought ! " La 
 main a 1'ceuvre ! " " Hand at work ! " Yes, 
 ceaselessly at work, even in the darkest hours 
 of misery, that hand of the artist and the 
 gentleman, at once so delicate and so brave, 
 whose labour only rested in death ! In his 
 last days he used to watch, sadly enough, the 
 failing strength of those poor brave hands 
 which could no longer hold the pen, and he 
 uttered one night, to one of his faithful friends, 
 this phrase, which sounds like a knell, " Look ! 
 my flesh is ripening for the tomb." 
 
 I return to my story. The old emigrt 
 marquis, Armand, not choosing to leave the 
 bones of a Yilliers de 1'Isle Adam in England, 
 returned to France towards 1820, and died, 
 soon after the birth of the poet, in a little 
 manor-house, whose only tower overlooks the 
 port of Legue and the tossing expanse of the 
 Bay of St. Brieuc. He left four children, 
 two sons and two daughters. One, Gabrielle,
 
 io VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 became a nun, and died not long ago, a sister 
 of the Sacre Coeur de Jesus. The other 
 married, when no longer young, a Mons. du 
 Rumain. This worthy couple never showed 
 any great tenderness for their nephew, either 
 during his life or after his death. The 
 youngest brother, Victor, entered the priest- 
 hood very early in life. He was a wise and 
 saintly man. He refused all honours, and 
 would never leave the poor parish of Plou- 
 milliau, of which he was for half a century 
 the devoted rector. His nephew has dedi- 
 cated to him one of the most extraordinary 
 of his tales, " L'Intersigne." It was written 
 in 1875 in the presbytery of the good and 
 simple priest ; and the sojourn of the great 
 and unhappy poet (whose life at that time 
 was all storm, agitation, and care) in the 
 peace of that quiet retreat, inspired him with 
 these wonderful lines, which none who knew 
 and loved him can read without emotion : 
 
 " The rural aspect of this house, with its 
 green-shuttered windows, its three stone steps, 
 its tangle of ivy, clematis, and tea-roses, 
 covering the walls and reaching the roof
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. n 
 
 (whence a little cloud of smoke escaped 
 through a chimney topped by a vane), in- 
 spired me with a feeling^of calm, of well-being, 
 of profound peace. The trees of a neigh- 
 bouring orchard showed through the trellised 
 enclosure, their leaves all rusted by the ex- 
 hausting summer heats. The two windows 
 of the only storey shone with the western 
 fire. Between them was a hollow niche 
 holding the image of some happy saint. 
 Silently I dismounted, fastening my horse 
 to the window-shutter, and as I raised 
 the knocker I cast a traveller's glance at 
 the horizon behind me. But so brightly 
 did that horizon shine over the wild and 
 distant forests of oak and pine, whither the 
 last birds were winging their belated way, 
 so solemnly did the waters of a distant reed- 
 covered lake reflect the sky, so beautiful 
 was nature in the calm air of that deserted 
 spot, at that moment when the silence falls, 
 that I stood mute, the knocker still dangling 
 in my grasp. ' O thou ! ' I thought, ' who 
 findest not the refuge of thy dreams, and to 
 whom, after many a weary march 'neath cruel
 
 12 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 stars so joyful at the start, so saddened 
 now the land of Canaan with its palm-trees 
 and running waters comes not with the dawn. 
 Heart made for other exile than that whose 
 bitterness thou sharest with brothers who 
 love thee not! Behold, here mayst thou sit 
 thee down upon the stone of melancholy 
 here mayst thou dream such dreams as might 
 haunt thee in the tomb, wouldst thou truly 
 desire to die ! Come hither, then, for here 
 the sight of the heavens shall transport thee 
 into oblivion ! " I cite this passage, not only 
 because it seems to me to be exceedingly 
 beautiful, but because it really is a psycho- 
 logical document one of the very rare in- 
 stances in which a writer has permitted his 
 published work to reflecl: his personal emo- 
 tion. 
 
 The renunciation of the world by the 
 young sister and brother of Villiers was not 
 perhaps altogether the result of an irresistible 
 vocation. In these old races, the family 
 spirit is traditional, and the sacrifice of the 
 earthly interest of its younger members on 
 the altar of the birthright of the eldest, is
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 13 
 
 still not imfrequently made. However this 
 may have been, the Marquis Joseph de 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, Knight of the Order 
 of Malta " de la Langue de France," remained 
 in consequence of that fact the only repre- 
 sentative of his mighty line. He obtained a 
 dispensation from the Pope, and married 
 Mdlle. Marie Frangoise le Nepveu de Car- 
 fort, who was the mother of our Villiers. 
 The Marquis de 1'Isle Adam did not dero- 
 gate from his dignity by allying himself with 
 this family. The knight Roland de Carfort 
 took the Cross in 1248. In 1370 Olivier 
 de Carfort allied himself with the Dukes of 
 Brittany. At the time of the first reform of 
 the nobility in 1669, the De Carfort family 
 proved seven generations. It appears in the 
 registers of nobility from 1425 to 1535, for 
 the parishes of Cesson, Le Fceil, St. Turiaff, 
 and Plaintel, in the bishopric of St. Brieuc. 
 The Nepvou, or Le Nepveu, were lords of 
 Carfort, Beruen, La Roche, Crenan, Du Clos, 
 La Cour, La Ville Anne, Lescouet, and La 
 Coudraye. They bore as arms, " De gueules 
 a six billettes d'argent, 3, 2, i au chef de meme."
 
 i 4 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 I ask indulgence for my long dissertation 
 on these genealogical details. There was 
 but one weak spot in the coat of mail woven 
 of pride and haughty scorn with which Vil- 
 liers endued himself before he descended 
 into the terrible lists of life. The polished 
 vipers of the boulevards, the jealous carrion- 
 crows of literature, knew well that to poison 
 and wound this invulnerability, their bites and 
 their beak-thrusts must be directed against 
 his family pride. They did not fail to do it ! 
 His right to everything was disputed, ances- 
 tors, nobility, his very name ! Villiers used to 
 roar like a lion stung by poisonous flies. 
 But good, clear, precise proofs are worth 
 more to the adlual public than the loudest 
 roars, and if in that country beyond the grave 
 he still troubles concerning trivial earthly 
 matters, he will rejoice that his Breton cousin 
 has endeavoured to establish incontestably 
 his relationship with those heroes of the sword 
 from whom, himself a hero of the pen, he so 
 worthily descended. 
 
 Unfortunately, it is possible to be at the 
 same time exceedingly well-born and exces-
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 15 
 
 sively poor ; and Mdlle. de Carfort was no 
 richer than the marquis. Nevertheless, thanks 
 to an old aunt, Mdlle. Daniele Kerinou, who 
 had adopted her and who possessed a modest 
 competence ; thanks, too, to some remnants of 
 fortune, and to the fabulous cheapness of life 
 in Brittany in those days, the household 
 might have lived with dignity, dividing the 
 year between the modest residence on the 
 sea-coast and the little old house in the Rue 
 Houvenagues at St. Brieuc. But the singular 
 disposition and the perilous whimsicality of 
 the head of the family spoilt everything. 
 
 I do not believe that there has ever existed 
 either in reality or in fiction a character more 
 extraordinary than that of the father of Villiers. 
 To depict it, even approximately, would need 
 all the raciness of Dickens, all the profound 
 power of observation of Balzac. And besides, 
 I should be carried too far by the subject. 
 I will content myself, therefore, with sketching 
 one salient trait of this wonderfully original 
 man. The Marquis de 1'Isle Adam was 
 possessed with an effulgent dazzling vision of 
 gold. His son was haunted in the same way,
 
 1 6 VILLIERS DE LISLE ADAM. 
 
 and he has thus described himself in one of 
 his novels : " My sole inheritance, alas ! has 
 consisted in his dazzling hopes and dreams ! 
 Indifferent to the political cares of the century 
 and of the Fatherland indifferent, too, to the 
 temporary results of the criminal failures of 
 their representatives I linger to gaze upon 
 the reddening crests of the neighbouring 
 forest ; instinctively, though why I know not, 
 I shun the ill-omened moonlight and the 
 noxious presence of my fellow-men. Yes, I 
 shun them ! For I feel that I bear in my 
 soul the reflected glory of the barren wealth 
 of many a forgotten king." 
 
 But whereas the writer found in the exer- 
 cise of his art an outlet for his besetting idea, 
 and a defence against its allurements, the 
 marquis formed the wild project of realizing 
 his visions by becoming a man of business. 
 And a singular business man was he this 
 tall, thin marquis ! Always in the clouds full 
 of morgue, and haughty as a descendant of the 
 " Porte Oriflamme of France " might well be ; 
 gifted, truly, with an all-devouring activity, 
 but spending it all in placing shares in the
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 17 
 
 most chimerical of undertakings ! He asserted, 
 and with some show of reason, that during 
 the Revolution, and the troublous times that 
 ensued, many inheritances were wrongly as- 
 signed to people who had no right to them, 
 and this to the detriment of the real heirs. 
 On this supposition his principal speculation 
 depended. He undertook, in consideration 
 of a certain percentage, to have restored to 
 the injured families the properties which were 
 theirs by right. This brilliant project once 
 formed, the marquis went forth, beating up 
 the country in every direction, searching 
 private libraries, public archives, and church 
 registers ; talking to old people, and accumu- 
 lating a formidable mass of information. 
 Then, when he considered himself sufficiently 
 armed, apprizing those who were most inte- 
 rested. Some, seduced by the hope of gain, 
 allowed themselves to be tempted, and after 
 long and expensive litigation, ended by con- 
 signing the marquis and his imaginary in- 
 heritances to all the gods of Erebus. This 
 discoverer of doubtful inheritances soon be- 
 came the terror of every attorney, lawyer, 
 
 c
 
 1 8 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 and sheriffs' officer in Lower Brittany. For 
 his haughty self-confidence carried him every- 
 where, into every office, every agency ; and 
 his cool pride, his aristocratic ways, and his 
 illustrious name, awed the worthy scriveners 
 of a remote province, where people are still 
 simple enough to respect certain things. It 
 will easily be conceived that such under- 
 takings and the failure which generally crowned 
 them, far from augmenting the redoubtable 
 marquis's income, made fresh gaps in his 
 patrimony. 
 
 And the second speculation undertaken by 
 this astonishing person was as fantastic as 
 the first. Dreaming, as he did incessantly, 
 of delusive treasure, he soon began to imagine 
 that it existed elsewhere than in his own 
 fancy. He persuaded himself that the soil of 
 old Armorica concealed subterranean caves, 
 mute guardians of the fabulous riches placed 
 in them by former generations in times of 
 trouble and civil war. 
 
 Where, for example, was the huge fortune 
 of the Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, which had 
 enabled them to take rank amongst the most
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 19 
 
 gorgeous courtiers of France ? The seeker 
 of inheritances became a treasure seeker, and 
 set himself to work with the same ardour 
 and conviction as heretofore. In the neigh- 
 bourhood of Quintin stood the ruins of an 
 old castle, which had formerly belonged to the 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam. The marquis bought 
 a concession, hired labourers, and set about 
 his researches. I know not whether he had 
 discovered in his family archives, some proof, 
 or even any vague indication, which might 
 lead to success. His son was convinced he 
 had. He has spoken to me very seriously 
 and eloquently of this treasure, buried for 
 centuries ; he has shown me the plan of the 
 subterranean hiding-place, and he endeavoured 
 to find capitalists to assist his father in com- 
 pleting his excavations. 
 
 Fortunately money was not to be had, and 
 Villiers, not having been able to carry out 
 this dream in a practical way, has realized it 
 in a wonderful manner in one of his most 
 powerful works. I speak of the book entitled 
 " Le Vieux de la Montagne," the full and 
 complete manuscript of which I have held
 
 20 
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 in my hands. This drama, according to the 
 poet's design, should have immediately fol- 
 lowed that of " Axel," of which it is the 
 continuation, as " The Adoration of the 
 Magi " is the conclusion.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Birth of Villiers de 1'Isle Adam His baptism His 
 childhood Stolen by mountebanks School life 
 St. Brieuc Laval Rennes His first poem 
 His early portrait "L'Amour et la Mort" Elegy 
 Literary plans Family devotion and tenderness 
 " Our Matthias " Departure for Paris. 
 
 H I LE her husband was thus spend- 
 ing himself in a feverish and ruinous 
 activity, the gentle and delicate 
 marquise lived sadly on at home 
 in the company of her good aunt Kerinou. 
 The existence of these two women was solitary 
 and sad, the anxiety which the undertakings 
 of the head of the family caused Mdme. de 
 1'Isle Adam alone breaking its monotony; 
 but a fervent piety, a rare gentleness of soul, 
 and a strong hope in the goodness of God, 
 supported her through life. Her faith was at
 
 22 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 last rewarded, and God granted her most 
 ardent desire, by sending her in November, 
 1838, a son who was the joy, the belief, the 
 hope, and the pride of her simple existence. 
 Never did a great artist have a more admir- 
 able mother ! During her long life she never 
 wavered once in her faith in him, and in his 
 genius. She believed in her son with the same 
 simpletrust with which she believed in her God. 
 It is easy to conceive with what joy the 
 advent of this child was hailed by these two 
 lonely women. Here was a being to love, to 
 cherish, to bring up sunshine breaking in 
 upon the monotony of their darkness. The 
 marquis, too, was radiant as he gazed on this 
 offshoot of the Villiers de 1'Isle Adam. Here 
 -was someone who would restore the glory of 
 the old race. Ah! he would endow his son 
 with fabulous wealth. He would force the 
 earth to render up the treasure hidden in 
 its breast ! Back he went to his excava- 
 tions, the marquise and her aunt seeing him 
 depart this time with less regret, for hope and 
 consolation smiled on the two good women 
 from the baby's cradle.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 23 
 
 The Bishop of St. Brieuc stood godfather 
 to the new-comer, and baptized him, 28th 
 November, 1838, in the presence of his grand- 
 father, his father, and Mdlle. de Kerinou. 
 The venerable prelate bestowed on his godson 
 his own Christian name of Matthias. 
 
 I have no intention of following step by 
 step the progress of the childhood of Villiers ; 
 the most talented biographers of famous men 
 have seldom succeeded in making the early 
 years of their heroes interesting. For child- 
 hood is above all things a period of silent 
 incubation, during which soul and mind are 
 secretly and laboriously developed. One 
 incident of these first years spent at St. Brieuc 
 must, however, be reported, for later the ima- 
 gination of Villiers embroidered it with fan- 
 tastic details. He was about seven years old, 
 when his nurse lost him out walking. A 
 band of strolling mountebanks, who were 
 going to Brest, met the strayed child, and 
 looking on the sprightly fair-haired boy as 
 their legitimate prize, laid hands on him. 
 Some days later his father found him at Brest 
 in the booth of his strolling captors. He was
 
 24 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 already the pet of the company, and there 
 appeared to be such a bond of affection 
 between the chief of the poor rope-dancers 
 and the boy, that the marquis, overjoyed to 
 get back his son, relinquished all idea of pro- 
 secution. Those who were acquainted with 
 Villiers will easily imagine what wonderful 
 and humorous tales he would weave out of 
 such an adventure. It was worth listening 
 to, when, in picturesque style, he would con- 
 jure up the memories of the two years he had 
 spent amongst those admirable, though ill- 
 favoured gipsies, visiting successively Italy, 
 Germany, the Tyrol, and chivalrous Hungary 
 rescued and restored at last to his family 
 through the devotion of a beautiful Romany 
 lass, the last descendant of a time-honoured 
 race, etc., etc. Villiers began his education 
 at the school of St. Brieuc, but soon after- 
 wards continued it at the Lyce"e at Laval. 
 There his genius began to trouble his soul. 
 The divine visions of poetry hovered round 
 him, the breath of artistic enthusiasm fell 
 glowing on his brow, and his first verses were 
 written. Between whiles he concluded his
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 25 
 
 classical studies, which, once finished, his 
 family settled with him at Rennes, in a house 
 in the Rue de Corbin. At this time Villiers 
 de 1'Isle Adam was seventeen years old, and 
 it was sufficient to see him for a few moments 
 to be convinced of his vocation. Inspiration 
 beamed on his full pale forehead, it sparkled 
 in his discourse, in which the tumult of ideas 
 pressed disorderly one on the other, trembled 
 on his full lips already curled with irony, and 
 filled his clear blue eyes with a disturbing 
 light. His large, fair, dishevelled head, his 
 strange gestures, his disorderly style of dress, 
 alarmed the correct provincial society, of 
 which, by the way, he saw but little. But 
 those few privileged mortals who entered the 
 magic circle of his intimacy, remained there 
 fascinated and dazzled. Villiers already pos- 
 sessed that extraordinary magnetic power 
 which he preserved all his life, and of which 
 every friend of his has felt the influence. The 
 depth of thought in one so young was almost 
 uncanny. All in fact he needed, at the time 
 of his arrival at Rennes, to fit him to pro- 
 nounce his vows before the altar of art, was
 
 26 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 that his heart should bleed under the divine 
 wound of love, the agonizing consecration of 
 every true poet. 
 
 It was amongst the green fields and lanes 
 of Brittany that there arose for him, to vanish 
 almost immediately in death, that tender vision 
 of womanhood which was his fleeting, but his 
 only earthly love. She was one of those en- 
 trancing creatures, of whom he has so well 
 said, " There are certain helpmates who en- 
 noble every one of life's joys, certain radiant 
 maidens whose love is only positively given 
 once. Yes, some few saintly souls, ideal in 
 their dawning beauty." I will not profane the 
 sacred passion of these two young hearts by 
 trying to describe it. I will only say, They 
 loved, and she died. On a sudden, suffering 
 unfolded and spread the poet's budding wings. 
 In an artist's youth, all his feelings, even 
 sorrow, turn to song, and so it was with 
 Villiers. These lines, written at seventeen 
 years of age by the disdainful scoffer our 
 generation knew so well, have their natural 
 place here, marking, as they do, the close of 
 the child's and the birth of the artist's existence.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 27 
 
 I. 
 
 O charmants eglantiers ! soleil, rayon, verdure ! 
 Frais salut que la terre offre dans un murmure 
 De zephirs renaissants, aux coeurs emplis d'espoir, 
 Bocage encor tout plein de chastes reveries, 
 Six mois se sont passes loin de vos fleurs che'ries : 
 J'avais besoin de vous revoir. 
 
 Oh ! vous souvenez-vous, foret delicieuse, 
 De la jolie enfant qui passait gracieuse, 
 Souriant simpkment au ciel, a. 1'avenir, 
 Se perdant avec moi dans ces vertes allees ? 
 Eh bien ! parmi les lis de vos sombres vallees, 
 Vous ne la verrez plus venir. 
 
 O printemps ! 6 lilas ! 6 profondes ramees ! 
 Comme autrefois vos fleurs, qu'elle avait tant aimees, 
 Sous vos sentiers deserts exhalent leurs amours ; 
 L'aubepine s'enlace au bane de la charmille, 
 L'oiseau chante, le ciel est bleu, le soleil brille : 
 Rien n'a change dans les beaux jours ! 
 
 Silencieux vallon ! cela n'etait qu'un reve, 
 Un songe radieux qui maintenant s'acheve 
 Et ne laisse apres lui qu'un amer souvenir . . . 
 Ne me demandez pas ce qu'elle est devenue, 
 La pauvre jeune fille en ce monde venue 
 Pour consoler et pour mourir ! 
 
 Morte ! et je suis encore en proie a 1'existence ! 
 C'est done cela la vie ? Et deja mon enfance 
 A-t-elle disparu loin de ce coeur brise ?
 
 28 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 Seigneur, vous etes grand, mais vous etes severe ! 
 Ainsi me voila seul : c'est fini sur la terre ; 
 Cela s'appelle : " le Passe." 
 
 II. 
 
 He"las ! je me souviens. Les vents au sein des ombres, 
 Du fleuve harmonieux plissaient les vagues sombres ; 
 Les chants ailes du soir s'etaient evanouis ; 
 Et la lune, en glissant parmi les blancs nuages, 
 Souvent illuminait les teintes des feuillages 
 Du clair obscur des belles nuits. 
 
 Le rossignol, cache" sous 1'epaisse feuille"e, 
 Modulait les soupirs de sa chanson perlee, 
 Les fleurs, dans leurs parfums, s'endormaient a leur tour 
 Et comme deux rayons reunissent leur flamme, 
 Tous deux nous unissions nos ames dans une ame, 
 Et nos deux cceurs dans notre amour. 
 
 Comme son joli pied se posait sur la mousse ! 
 Comme sa chevelure e"tait soyeuse et douce ! 
 Nous allions, enlaces, sous les hauts peupliers ; 
 Elle avait dix-sept ans ; j'avais cet age a peine, 
 Souvent le rossignol retenait son haleine 
 En e"coutant nos pas le"gers. 
 
 Et moi je contemplais mon amante pensive, 
 Et nous nous en allions, seuls, aupres de la rive. 
 Sa main sur mon epaule et le front sur ma main ; 
 Et les fre"missements de la nuit solitaire 
 Emportaient dans les cieux, ainsi qu'une priere, 
 Tous les doux songes du chemin.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 29 
 
 III. 
 
 Puis, le reveil ! la mort ! 1'existence qui change ! 
 O temps ! vieillard glace" ! qu'as-tu fait de mon ange ? 
 Oil l'as-tu mise, helas ! et froide et pour toujours ? 
 Qu'as-tu fait de 1'enfant jeune et pleine de charities, 
 Qu'as-tu fait du sourire et qu'as-tu fait des larmes, 
 Oh ! qu'as-tu fait de nos amours ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 Voyez comme les fleurs viennent bien pres des tombes ! 
 On dirait un bouquet que les jeunes colombes, 
 Retournant au pays, nous laissent pour adieu. 
 Qu'avait-elle done fait pour mourir la premiere? 
 Est-ce un crime de vivre ? et 1'amour, sur la terre, 
 N'est-il pas le pardon de Dieu ? 
 
 Ne me souriez plus, 6 campagne immortelle ! 
 Je suis seul maintenant ; si ce n'etait pour elle, 
 Je n'avais pas besoin de vos fraiches beautes ; 
 N'ai-je pas vu 1'abime ou tombent toutes choses ? 
 Les lis meurent dans 1'ombre ou se fanent les roses : 
 Les cypres seuls restent planted. 
 
 Elle est sous les cypres, la pale jeune femme ! 
 Mon amour triste et fier brule encor dans mon ame, 
 Comme une lampe d'or veille sur le cercueil. 
 Mais je ne pleure plus : la douleur a ses charmes. 
 Et d'ailleurs, 6 mon Dieu, mes yeux n'ont plus de larmes, 
 Et mon cceur seul porte le deuil.
 
 30 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 I. 
 
 O lovely eglantine ! O sunlit glades ! 
 
 Fresh greeting offered by the murmuring earth 
 
 On circling breezes to all hopeful hearts, 
 
 Since last I saw those fair and much-loved flowers, 
 
 Which yet fill all your memory-haunted groves, 
 
 Six weary months have passed, 
 
 And I have longed to look on you again ! 
 
 Dost thou remember, Forest, lovely yet, 
 The pretty graceful child who wandered by, 
 Smiling her simple faith in Heaven and Fate, 
 And straying with me through your verdant maze? 
 Alas ! the lilies hidden in your green depths 
 Shall see her pass no more ! 
 
 O spring-time ! Lilacs ! O deep greenwood shades ! 
 Your flowers, erstwhile so dear to her sweet soul, 
 Still shed their scent o'er your deserted paths, 
 The may still twines the bench within the grove, 
 Birds sing, the sky is blue, the sun still shines, 
 
 No change has come upon your summer-tide : 
 
 Dumb silent valley ! It was all a dream, 
 A radiant dream, too soon, alas ! to pass 
 And leaving but a bitter sense of loss 
 Where she is now, I pray you, ask me not ! 
 That sweet young creature, sent into this world 
 To comfort others then herself to die ! 
 
 Dead ! Can it be ? And I must still live on ! 
 Is this Life's fate ? And has my youth indeed 
 Forsaken for ever this poor broken heart ?
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 31 
 
 Lord, Thou art just, but oh ! Thou strikest hard ! 
 I am alone ! I've done with earthly dreams ! 
 
 I've learnt the bitter meaning of " The Past ! " 
 
 II. 
 
 Alas ! I see it still ! Out of the shadowy night 
 The gentle river flowed in darkly rippling waves ; 
 Fallen into dreamless sleep, the birds had hushed their 
 
 songs, 
 
 The moonbeams creeping slow athwart the fleecy clouds 
 Touched with their silver light the dusk and massy shades, 
 Seen through the twilight of the lovely night. 
 
 The nightingale from out the green and bosky shade 
 Sighed forth his passion in his pearly-throated song, 
 The flowers had bowed their heads in deep and perfumed 
 
 sleep, 
 
 And we, whose souls were joined as though in one sun ray, 
 Could feel our happy hearts beating in one great 
 
 love ! 
 
 How firm her dainty step upon the mossy path ! 
 How silken and how soft the masses of her hair ! 
 As arm in arm we walked 'neath the tall poplar trees, 
 (She was but seventeen, and I was hardly more,) 
 Often the nightingale would seem to hold his breath, 
 To listen to our lightly falling steps. 
 
 And how I loved to gaze upon her thoughtful face, 
 As far along the bank we wandered all alone, 
 My shoulder 'neath her hand, while mine caressed her 
 brow,
 
 32 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 And all the rustlings of the lovely night 
 Carried to Heaven, as though they were a prayer, 
 The sweet and dreamy fancies of the hour ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Then, with Death's awful change, the sad awakening 
 came ! 
 
 hoary-headed Time ! Where hast thou hid my love? 
 For ever cold and still, ah ! whither is she gone? 
 That child, so full of life, of young resistless charm, 
 Where is her magic smile ? and where her melting tears? 
 
 And where the vanished glory of our loves ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 Mark now, how lush the flowers grow near a tomb ! 
 Just like the nosegays some young turtle doves 
 Might leave for farewell offering, ere they fly 
 Into their native country ! Why should she die first ? 
 Is life a crime? And is not earthly love 
 God's own forgiveness ? 
 
 Smile then no more, O immortal country fields ! 
 
 1 stand henceforth alone. And it was but for her 
 
 That your fresh blooming beauty seemed so sweet to me ! 
 Have I not plumbed the depths which ingulf all earthly 
 
 hope? 
 The lilies wither, and the roses fade away 
 
 Beneath the shadows which the cypress loves ! 
 
 Beneath the cypress sleeps that woman young and pale, 
 My sad and faithful love still burns within my soul,
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 33 
 
 Like to the golden lamp which burns before a corpse. 
 But I can weep no more, in spite of sorrow's charm, 
 And this, O Lord, is why : My eyes have no more 
 
 tears, 
 And my heart hides its lonely misery ! 
 
 Villiers never loved truly, deeply, in- 
 genuously, but this once. No other woman 
 ever took in his existence the place of the 
 gentle, dead Breton girl. His imagination 
 may have been swept away by the rustle of 
 some passing robe, his senses may have been 
 captivated, his artistic feeling interested, by 
 the charm of the perturbing mystery which 
 surrounds the eternal problem of the softer 
 sex, but the poet's heart remained untouched, 
 impregnable, proud, wrapped up in its sad 
 fidelity to that early memory. 
 
 This first terrible experience of sorrow 
 hastened the prodigiously rapid intellectual 
 development of the young writer. He sought 
 and found refuge in excessive activity, and 
 Inspiration, great and radiant consoler, illu- 
 mined his mind and beamed upon his heart. 
 Vast conceptions, gigantic projects, such as 
 are always formed by youthful artists, en- 
 
 D
 
 34 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 veloped his spirit with their luxuriant growth. 
 In this one year, he conceives the idea of a 
 drama, " Morgane," impressed with a melan- 
 choly splendour ; he plans a wonderful trilogy, 
 which eventually, under the three titles of 
 " Axel," " L' Adoration des Mages," and " Le 
 Vieux de la Montagne," will become the chief 
 work, the crowning point of his existence as 
 a thinker ; he imagines his mysterious novel, 
 " I sis," and, above all, he pours forth in lines 
 pulsating with life and glow, all the tumultuous 
 grief of his tortured and sorrow-laden soul ! 
 During this period, while his genius was agi- 
 tatedly beating her wings like a captive eagle, 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam found at the home- 
 fireside constant encouragement, unceasing 
 sympathy, and immeasurable tenderness ! 
 There is something admirably touching and 
 rare in this worship of him by his own people 
 in his early days. Generally the youth of 
 an artist is darkened by the ill-will, the in- 
 stinctive mistrust of art, the narrow-minded- 
 ness, the love of lucre, of his family. In the 
 case of Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, the contrary 
 was the fact. The mother, the old aunt, the
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 35 
 
 treasure-seeking marquis, disagreeing in all 
 else, formed a perfect union when it was a 
 question of singing the praises of " their 
 Matthias." They lauded him, they exalted 
 him on to a pedestal. His vocation, his 
 genius, the certainty of his success, of his 
 future glory, were so many articles of faith to 
 them. And they proved it. 
 
 Persuaded that Paris was the only stage 
 worthy of the great part which their Matthias 
 was called to enact, convinced that it was 
 their own absolute duty to sacrifice every- 
 thing in order that the genius of the family 
 might expand in full freedom, these admirable 
 souls, at the very sight of whom the self- 
 important bourgeois smiled and shrugged 
 their shoulders, resolved to sell everything, 
 to realize their little fortune, and, their small 
 purse in hand, to go and await in some out-of- 
 the-way corner in the formidable town the 
 final victory of the last of the Villiers de 
 1'Isle Adam, who, according to their childlike 
 faith, was with brain and pen to reconquer 
 for them the fortune and the celebrity which 
 their ancestors had won by blood and sword !
 
 36 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 All hastened to the rescue. The nun of 
 the Sacred Heart, the abbe, the old aunt 
 the marquis was indefatigable in calling in 
 his funds; he sold at an enormous loss, but 
 without a shadow of regret, his little manor- 
 house at Le"gue and the old residence at St. 
 Brieuc. He abandoned the excavations for 
 ten treasures, and the search for half a hundred 
 inheritances, and following his son, accom- 
 panied by his wife, and having in tow the old 
 aunt, who would not be left behind, he started 
 for Paris, to the cry of " Dieu le volt ! " (It 
 is God's will !) with the same confidence in 
 which his crusader ancestors had departed to 
 Jerusalem.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Paris The reign of the common-place in literature 
 The poets The defenders of the Beautiful " Le Par- 
 nasse Contemporain " " LesParnassiens" Catulle 
 blendes and the " Revue Fantaisiste " Triumphal 
 entry of Villiers de ITsle Adam First Poems 
 Friendships Stephane Mallarmeand Leon Dierx 
 "Claire Lenoir" Appearance of Dr. Triboulat Bon- 
 homet A few words touching this personage " Le 
 Roman d'une Nuit," by Catulle Mendes Death of 
 the "Revue Fantaisiste "The Blue Dragon Hotel 
 The Rue de Douai- Villiers de ITsle Adam, accord- 
 ing to Francois Coppee. 
 
 T the time of the exodus of Villiers 
 and his family, Paris had become, 
 from the artistic and literary point 
 of view, the paradise of the com- 
 mon-place. The gods of this Olympus were 
 composers of operettas, manufacturers of 
 serial novels, historiographers of the latest 
 scandals, poets of the drawing-room, of the
 
 38 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 boudoir, nay, of the cafe concerts. All these 
 lived and fattened on their trade, honoured, 
 and almost celebrated, clinging to the title of 
 artist, yet ignorant of, or despising, the pri- 
 mordial rules of art. The censure, which 
 smiled sanctimoniously on the short skirts 
 and sprightly whims of the Offenbach School, 
 could never be severe enough on truly artistic 
 and conscientious work. It was the epoch of 
 the ridiculous prosecution of the author of 
 " Madame Bovary," and of the sentence 
 against Baudelaire. 
 
 As for those poets who pursued their 
 divine chimera with fervour and disinterested- 
 ness, no jest was reckoned too coarse, no insult 
 in too bad taste, to be thrown in their faces. 
 The press was perpetually sharpening the 
 arrows of its keenest satire, wherewith to 
 pierce whomsoever aspired to any great ideal. 
 Victor Hugo, exiled as he was, alone suc- 
 ceeded in stirring the masses to their depths. 
 In the face of all this opprobrium, the last 
 survivors of the admirable phalanx of romantic 
 poets had wrapped themselves in scornful 
 silence. Emile Deschamps lay dying ob-
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 39 
 
 scurely in the dreary town of Versailles, he, 
 the author of the " Romanceros," rhyming 
 sickly madrigals to Chloris ; while the divine 
 Theophile Gautier, the illustrious hero of the 
 first performance of " Hernani," cast the last 
 blossoms of his astonishing intellect on the 
 common track of the newspaper feuilleton. 
 Poetry and art seemed in truth to be dead, 
 stifled by the triumph of materialistic stupidity. 
 But poetry and art are as immortal as the 
 starry heavens, and at the very moment in 
 which they seemed to lie in their last agony, 
 they were silently making ready to spread 
 their vigorous limbs and soar with lofty 
 flight into the blue realms of the ideal ! 
 
 Certain youths, very young and poor, 
 banded together in the same faith, the same 
 deep and passionate love of the beautiful, the 
 same lively hatred of the common-place and 
 the vulgar, formed the bold project of revolt- 
 ing, w r eak and almost defenceless as they 
 were, against this formidable tyranny of folly 
 and mediocrity. They resolved to defend 
 the sacred domain of literature with all their 
 young strength against the invasion which
 
 40 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 threatened it ; to proclaim the power of 
 rhythm, the respect that is due to syntax, to 
 affirm, in short, that no work can be really 
 artistic without a constant jealousy for form. 
 The critics of the chief newspapers, the 
 chroniclers of the small ones, drew upon their 
 usual arsenal of gibes and jeers, and old jokes 
 turned out as new, to scoff down these rash 
 youths. They were given strange nicknames, 
 " Formists," "Stylists," " Fantaisistes," " Im- 
 passibles." Songs were made about them, 
 they were caricatured, made to play the parts 
 of idiots in the " Revues " at the end of each 
 year, and to conclude, when a young pub- 
 lisher, who (thanks to his lucky daring) had 
 become a millionaire, ventured to publish the 
 first number of their collected poems, " Le 
 Parnasse Contemporain," they were held up 
 to public laughter and indignation as " Les 
 Parnassiens " (the Parnassians). 
 
 All this rage, however, far from crushing 
 these chivalrous young votaries of the ideal, 
 filled their hearts with fresh courage. In spite 
 of jests and insults, they pursued their course, 
 and what is still more admirable and touching,
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 41 
 
 pursued it in spite of the direst poverty. Of 
 them, as of every artist, posterity has been 
 the true judge ; and it has sent back to their 
 native obscurity those who, from the heights 
 of their brilliant existence, made game of the 
 poor little feverish -eyed, shabby-coated poets. 
 Where are now the names of those sparkling 
 and witty quill-drivers, who poured forth their 
 sarcasms on the obscure Parnassians ? And, 
 on the other hand, the names of these same 
 Parnassians, are they not now familiar to us 
 all ? To cite only the chief among them, have 
 we not Francois Coppee, Sully Prudhomme, 
 Alphonse Daudet, Leon Cladel, Glatigny, 
 Catulle Mendes, and Villiers de 1'Isle Adam ? 
 Res miranda! The first publication of these 
 new representatives of "la jeune France" 
 was not a collection of verses, it was just 
 simply a review in which prose and poetry 
 joyously alternated. Gaily covered, cheerful 
 in tone, with an attractive and well-sounding 
 title, its editor was nineteen years old, and it 
 had not a contributor who counted more than 
 five-and- twenty summers. In short, it was 
 the " Revue Fantaisiste," whose director was
 
 42 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 a native of Bordeaux, newly arrived in Paris, 
 poor as Job and handsome as Apollo, by 
 name Catulle Mendes. The offices of this 
 review were in the Passage Mires, now 
 Passage des Princes. Here Villiers de 1'Isle 
 Adam broke his first lance, and my readers 
 will doubtless appreciate this quotation from 
 a little known but amusing work, in which 
 the former director of the " Revue Fantaisiste " 
 has presented, in a style at once witty and 
 feeling, the picture of the home of the " Par- 
 nasse Contemporain " : 
 
 " The office was a somewhat strange-look- 
 
 o 
 
 ing place ; hangings of green and rose- 
 coloured chintz, like a smiling meadow, seemed 
 to gaze in wonder at the mahogany cupboards 
 and tables. A lounge (seldom unoccupied) 
 at the back of the room appeared to sulk at 
 the leathern arm-chair and the cardboard 
 manuscript cases. It was half drawing-room, 
 and would fain have been all boudoir ! 
 
 " Hither, every afternoon, towards three 
 o'clock, came Theodore de Banville, giving 
 us freely, with the good-nature of a youthful 
 maestro, his intoxicating mixture of Orpheus
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 43 
 
 and Balzac, at one and the same time so lyric 
 and so truly Parisian ; Charles Asselineau, 
 with his long soft hair already grey, and on 
 his lips that smile, tender though ironic, which 
 none but Nodier ever had before him ; Leon 
 Golzan, who graciously vouchsafed us the 
 support of his name ; Charles Monselet, 
 Jules Noriac, Philoxene Boyer, dreaming of 
 Shakespeare, and Charles Baudelaire, slight, 
 elegant, a little stealthy, almost alarming with 
 his half-frightened air, gracefully haughty, 
 with the attraction and charm of beauty in 
 distress, rather like a very delicate bishop, 
 somewhat fallen away from grace perhaps, 
 who had donned an elaborate lay costume for 
 travelling purposes : ' His Eminence Mon- 
 seignor Beau Brummel ! ' He used to bring 
 us those wonderful prose poems, which are 
 numbered now amongst the most perfect 
 pages in French literature. There, too, Albert 
 Glatigny, with his vagrant flow of speech, 
 hand on hip, his necktie undone, his waistcoat 
 too short, and obstinately ignorant of braces, 
 smiling like some young faun, wearied out by 
 the tendernesses of the nymphs, would recite
 
 44 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 to us those amorous strophes of his, whose 
 rhymes seem to re-echo the sound of kisses." 
 It was in this abode, with its strange charm, 
 where the three twin sisters, Youth, Poetry, 
 and Poverty, seemed to have met together, 
 that Villiers de 1'Isle Adam made his entry 
 into the world of letters. He presented him- 
 self, almost immediately on his arrival in 
 Paris, his pockets stuffed with his family 
 parchments and his own manuscript com- 
 positions. At the very outset he took the 
 office by storm, and he soon became one of 
 the chief editors of the " Revue Fantaisiste." 
 The brilliant apparition of the last descendant 
 of the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta 
 has often been described in enthusiastic terms 
 by those who were eye-witnesses of it. " He 
 impressed us," says M. Henri Laujol, "as 
 being the most magnificently gifted young 
 man of his generation." Villiers brought with 
 him some manuscript poems, which were pub- 
 lished that very year by Scheuring of Lyons, 
 with much luxury of paper and printing, under 
 the title of" Premieres Poesies " (First Poems). 
 The book was dedicated to the Comte Alfred
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 45 
 
 de Vigny. In this collection of verse, now 
 hardly to be found, there is already a glimpse 
 of the profound original thinker, scornful of 
 all conventionalism. It is not, to be sure, by 
 any means a piece of perfection, but through 
 its uncertainties, its weaknesses, its gropings 
 in the dark, here and there, as in " Hermosa " 
 and " Le Chant du Calvaire," there beams 
 the flash of genius. 
 
 These first years of Villiers in Paris con- 
 tain the few truly happy moments of a life 
 full of bitterness. He was free, then, from 
 the anxiety of earning his daily bread, and 
 when he left the family circle, where he was 
 adored like a deity, he met everywhere, on 
 his first appearance, with an enthusiastic wel- 
 come. The originality of his gestures and 
 demeanour, and his profound, passionate, and 
 picturesque speech, full as it was of glowing 
 imagery, aroused amongst young people an 
 admiration which amounted to fanaticism. 
 He was the spoiled child of the Parnassians, 
 and he found in their coterie the two friends 
 who, through all the trials and hardships, and 
 all the mortifications of his life, remained
 
 46 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 faithful to him till death, and after it ; I 
 speak of M. Stephane Mallarme and M. 
 Lon Dierx. Every friend of Villiers must, 
 like myself, vow an infinite gratitude to 
 the two excellent-hearted poets who, having 
 supported the author of the " Nouveau 
 Monde " in the hours of his despondency and 
 darkest poverty, showed him, in his last ill- 
 ness, a care, a delicate tenderness, a devotion, 
 and a disinterestedness, which the tenderest 
 woman might have envied them. No artist's 
 existence, even in the direst tribulation, could 
 be completely wretched, while brightened and 
 warmed by the flame of such sturdy friendship. 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam made his d^but, 
 then, in the " Revue Fantaisiste," with a tale 
 called " Claire Lenoir," a strange, mysterious, 
 terrifying story. What makes this work 
 peculiarly interesting to us is that in it there 
 appears, for the first time, a character which 
 has become almost legendary, and on the 
 creation of which the writer worked up till 
 the end of his life. It will be understood 
 that I refer to the striking figure of Dr. 
 Triboulat Bonhomet, the personification of
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 47 
 
 the scientific and atheistic bourgeois a 
 monstrous Prud'homme, transcendently fool- 
 ish and ferociously egotistic. In drawing his 
 own portrait, Bonhomet writes this sentence, 
 which seems to me to sum up the original 
 idea of his author : " My physiognomy is that 
 of my century, of which I have reason to 
 believe myself the archetype ; briefly, I am a 
 doctor, a philanthropist, and a man of the 
 world." Again, speaking of his own convic- 
 tions, he says : " My religious ideas are 
 limited to the absurd conviction that God has 
 created man in His own image, and vice versa" 
 This Dr. Triboulat Bonhomet was to Villiers 
 what "le garden" was to Flaubert : a sort of 
 imaginary personage, whom he endued with a 
 complete personality, with all the passions of 
 a real and complicated character, in whose 
 mouth he placed the jokes and the aphorisms 
 which he collected in conversation and in life, 
 or which his profound and ironic wit invented 
 for him. This doctor makes one shudder rather 
 than laugh, and the circumstantial pedantry 
 with which he relates the alarming adventures 
 of " that discreet and scientific personage,
 
 48 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 Dame Claire Lenoir, widow," adds to the 
 terror of her story. 
 
 But I shall frequently have occasion, in the 
 course of these notes, to quote the sayings of 
 this "honorary member of many academies 
 and professor of physiology," whose greatest 
 enjoyment, according to his biographer, was 
 to kill swans, in order to hear their dying 
 song. For the moment, I must register the 
 decease of the poetical little review, in 
 which so many talents tried their budding 
 wings. It passed away in the second year of 
 its existence, beaten to death by the censure, 
 in the name of public morality. The so-called 
 outrage had been committed by its director, 
 Catulle Mendes, and took the form of a one- 
 act comedy in verse, entitled, " A Night's 
 Romance" ("Le Roman d'une Nuit"). The 
 piece was far from being a good one, but, 
 though frivolous and mediocre, it was not 
 criminal, and one wonders on reading it how 
 
 O 
 
 judges were found to condemn the author of 
 such a tiny spark to a month's imprisonment, 
 and the review which published it to 500 
 francs fine. The poet had to go to Ste.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 49 
 
 Pelagie and the review had to pay the fine. 
 Money was scarce, and by the time the 
 demands of justice were satisfied, the cashbox 
 was empty. The contributors cheerfully cele- 
 brated the obsequies of their literary offspring, 
 and most of them went to live in a furnished 
 inn in the Rue Dauphine, famous in the annals 
 of contemporary literature as the Blue Dragon 
 Hotel. Four years later, we find them 
 gathered once more round their former chief. 
 Fortune had smiled on Catulle Mendes ; he had 
 money in his pockets, and owned, in the Rue 
 de Douai, an apartment containing real furni- 
 ture and a piano ; likewise a groom, surnamed 
 Covielle, who opened the door to such visitors 
 as were in possession of the necessary pass- 
 word. In one of his articles in the " Patrie," 
 these meetings of the future Parnassians have 
 been admirably reproduced by Frangois Cop- 
 pee. Want of space forbids me to cite the 
 whole, but I quote this portrait of Villiers de 
 1'Isle Adam, which represents him with perfect 
 and striking truthfulness. 
 
 "Suddenly, round the assembled poets, runs 
 the universal cry of joy, ' Villiers ! Here's 
 
 E
 
 50 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 Villiers ! ' And all at once a young man, 
 with light blue eyes, a little wavering in his 
 walk, chewing a cigarette, tossing back his 
 disordered locks, and twisting his small, fair 
 moustache, enters, wearing a haggard look, 
 shakes hands absently, sees the open piano, 
 sits down to it, and nervously touching the 
 keys, sings in a voice which trembles, but the 
 deep and magic accents of which none of us 
 can ever forget, a melody he has improvised 
 in the street, a vague, mysterious melopceia, 
 which accompanies (thereby doubling the 
 depth and agitation of the impression it 
 makes) Charles Baudelaire's beautiful sonnet: 
 
 ' Nous aurons des lits plains d'odeurs le*geres 
 Des divans profonds comme des tombeaux,' etc. 
 
 ' Our beds shall be scented with sweetest perfume, 
 Our divans be as cool and as dark as the tomb ! ' 
 
 " Then, while all are still under the spell, 
 humming the last notes of his air, or else 
 abruptly breaking it off, he rises, leaves the 
 piano, goes as though to hide himself in the 
 corner of the room, and rolling another 
 cigarette, casts over his stupified audience
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 51 
 
 a comprehensive glance, the glance of Hamlet 
 as he lies at Ophelia's feet, during the repre- 
 sentation of the death of Gonzago. 
 
 " Thus appeared to us, eighteen years ago, 
 in those pleasant gatherings at the house of 
 Catulle Mendes, in the Rue de Douai, the 
 Comte Auguste Philippe Villiers de 1'Isle 
 Feb. 26, 1883.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Early influences Charles Baudelaire My father 
 His relations with Villiers Their intimacy The 
 Hotel d'Orle'ans Literary and philosophical gather- 
 ings Leon Cladel Villiers and the Hegelian philo- 
 sophy " Isis " "The Princess Tullia Fabriana" 
 Preface Eccentricities of style The original of 
 Doftor Bonhomet Doftor C. "Ellen" and 
 "Morgane" Sensations of loneliness The Mar- 
 quis de 1'Isle Adam continues at Paris the course of 
 his profitable financial operations The poisoner, 
 Comte Courty de la Pommerais The apartment in 
 the Rue St. Honore The marquis Aunt Kerinou 
 Matthew's decorations. 
 
 T sometimes happens that strong 
 influences felt by an artist in his 
 early intellectual life leave an in- 
 effaceable mark on his existence. 
 At the time of his initiation into literature, 
 Villiers fell under two such influences, that 
 of Charles Baudelaire, and that of my father.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 53 
 
 The ascendancy exercised over him by the 
 " Satanic " poet seems to me to have been 
 somewhat inauspicious. It developed his 
 taste for extremes and for mystification, it led 
 him astray from the exercise of his talent, 
 naturally clear and simple in its expression, 
 instigating him to bury it in clouds of whim- 
 sical metaphor, or to allow himself to be 
 drawn into the obscurities, the affectations, 
 the over-refinements, which sometimes dis- 
 figure his work, and make it so difficult to 
 read. Let it be understood that I do not 
 speak here of irony, which was one of 
 Villiers' most powerful weapons, and which 
 was originally, in his case, thoroughly good- 
 natured, though the hardships of life, and the 
 wicked stupidity of those who considered 
 themselves " the pink of gentility," sharpened 
 it, and rendered it pitiless and terrible. 
 
 But his connection with Baudelaire, the in- 
 fluence which the author of the " Fleurs du 
 Mai " gained over his heart and intellect at 
 the threshold of his literary career, inspired 
 him with that mania for making the middle 
 class stare, " epater le bourgeois," and for
 
 54 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 mystifying his readers, from which he was 
 never able to free himself even in his most 
 deeply thought-out work, " L'Eve Future." 
 
 My father's influence, on the contrary, was, 
 by Villiers' own acknowledgment, very useful 
 and precious to him. He often told me that 
 he would have risen much higher if he had 
 listened to him more. But there was nothing 
 strange in the fa<5t that his nervous nature, 
 his mind full of every sort of curiosity, his 
 youth, indeed, should have been much more 
 captivated by the wilful eccentricities, the 
 exotic life, the dandyism, and the cool per- 
 versity of Charles Baudelaire, than by the 
 counsels of his Breton relative, who was for 
 ever preaching to him sobriety, labour, soli- 
 tude, and silence. 
 
 Up to the time of the arrival of the family 
 of Villiers de 1'Isle Adam in Paris, my father's 
 relations with Villiers had merely been those 
 which usually exist between a youth and a 
 man considerably his senior; but, after the 
 young poet's triumphant entry into the capital, 
 attracted more than any other person by the 
 brilliant dawn of the budding genius, and
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 55 
 
 dreading for him the formidable reefs on 
 which so many great men make shipwreck 
 during their apprentice days, he drew Villiers 
 towards him, and took him, so to say, under 
 his wholesome tutorship. From that day, 
 Matthias became part of the family, and it 
 was soon after that he paid that first visit to 
 Fougeres my recollection of which I have 
 described at the commencement of this work. 
 Here, perhaps, is the fittest place to 
 insert an amusing letter, the facsimile of 
 which is offered to the inquiring reader. 
 It is addressed to my father, and dated from 
 Montfort, a small town in the department of 
 Ille-et-Vilaine. In it Villiers alludes to 
 the printing of his first volume of poems. 
 M. Lemenant, the lawyer-friend in whose 
 house the letter was written, was a worthy 
 and eccentric man, an old schoolfellow of the 
 poet's at Laval, who, having profited but 
 little by his earlier education at school, and 
 by his subsequent study of transcendental 
 philosophy in Paris, wisely devoted himself 
 to the care of the parental acres and briefs, 
 in his native province. He died young and
 
 56 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 rich. Villiers dedicated some verses to him 
 in the " Premieres Poesies." 
 
 " My dear good poet, 
 
 " And how are you ? Better I hope. 
 If I were in your place, I should be in the 
 rudest health. But let that be as it may, I 
 am certain that the one thing that you pine 
 for at this moment, is your seventy-second 
 game of chess. 
 
 " If, however, you should be thinking of 
 starting for the land of shadows, be good 
 enough to give me warning, so that I may 
 compose in your glory, and for the wonder- 
 ment of the world in general, a funeral march 
 in E flat. It is the fashionable key, and on 
 fashion I take my stand ! 
 
 " I have no letters from my interesting 
 family. Lemenant and I are in the depths of 
 poverty, which facl; forces me to ask your 
 permission to put off the repayment of your 
 kindly help. Don't swear at me ! I publish 
 the praise of your amiability far and wide. 
 And, besides, the fault is yours, and it will 
 teach you to be too good-natured ! Now, I ask
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 57 
 
 you, whether in this nineteenth century, any 
 sane man should lend money to his friend ? 
 Do you desire to see the finger of scorn 
 pointed at you in every drawing-room you 
 enter ? I will denounce you to the whole 
 of society as a traitor to the principle of 
 modern selfishness ! 
 
 " This may bore you but you richly de- 
 serve it ! 
 
 " The proofs of ' Master Perrin ' are comical 
 to the last degree. 
 
 " Lemenant and I have had several hearty 
 laughs at his expense. I am going to write 
 him a little jeering letter which will puzzle 
 his poor brains. 
 
 " Here is a specimen of his manner. It is 
 all the same from beginning to end. 
 
 "' Unfaige de Don Ivan & def pechevrf dv 
 golfe: 
 
 " ' L'usage de Don Juan et des pecheurs du 
 golfe.' 
 
 " Here you have an impossible rhyme, 
 printed in this man's extraordinary style. 
 Too much of a joke, isn't it ? Between our- 
 selves, a man who has such a notion must be
 
 58 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 mad ; just fancy a book printed on yellow 
 paper in this style ! Lemenant vows it 
 would be quite phosphorescent. It really is 
 comical, and in my collected works (if they 
 are ever published) I might afford myself 
 such a luxury, but at present ! Zut ! This is 
 my definition. He is the ne plus iiltra of a 
 grinning, superannuated typographer, or, if 
 you prefer it, the weird ink-scratcher of the 
 Gutenbergian Press ! and, in other words, 
 the grave of human thought ! 
 
 " Now, let us go on to less casual matters. 
 
 " Montfort is a town, or rather stay ! I 
 am right in calling it a town full of mud, and 
 of calm. We live in it, under the wing of 
 that good old seraph whose name is ' cheerful- 
 ness.' 
 
 " The country swarms with worthy people, 
 and one hardly knows oneself, coming from 
 Paris ! 
 
 " There is a mill here, a real mill, exactly 
 like Rosa Bonheur's pictures (still life). 
 
 " Lemenant pours daily from our open 
 window his sanctimonious speeches, and his 
 metaphysico-transcendental spleen.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 59 
 
 " The few terrified passers-by listen, listen, 
 and accompany his discourse to the air, 
 ' II a des bott, bott, bott.' The which pro- 
 duces an effect whereon I heartily congratulate 
 him. 
 
 " We live in the square, which triples the 
 interest of the view, and I peacefully go on 
 making rhymes in the midst of the tumult. 
 A bientot, dear kind poet ! 
 
 " Believe in my true faithful friendship ! I 
 clasp your hand and heartily embrace you. 
 If you have time, send me a reassuring word 
 about your health. 
 
 " VILLIERS DE L'!SLE ADAM." 
 
 At the very end of the Rue Richelieu, 
 almost opposite the Theatre Francais, stands 
 an hotel the Hotel d' Orleans where I 
 often and gladly stay. I cannot pass under 
 its vaulted entrance without being deeply 
 moved. As I gaze on the inner court with 
 its steep flight of steps, and glance at the 
 second-floor windows, all the ghosts of my 
 youthful school-days rise up around me, every 
 corner of the dwelling is familiar, and at each
 
 60 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 turn I seem to see the proud outline of my 
 father's face. Here he lived for twelve years, 
 and here my brothers and I, students at the 
 College Rollin, spent our Sunday holidays. 
 We used to be present in clouds of tobacco 
 smoke, at endless discussions between Villiers 
 de 1'Isle Adam and the master of the little 
 apartment. We did not understand much, 
 it must be admitted, but we used to gaze 
 open-mouthed at the wild gestures, the 
 chamois-like bounds, the contortions of every 
 feature, with which our cousin Matthias used 
 to embellish his arguments. 
 
 This hotel in the Rue Richelieu had not 
 then, it has not now, the commonplace aspecl; 
 of our modern caravanserais. In spite of 
 all the alterations made by its new owners, 
 the walls of the building still bear the marks 
 of its illustrious origin. 
 
 o 
 
 For this was the old town-house of the 
 Cardinal Armand de Richelieu, and the prin- 
 cipal building, reached by a flight of stone 
 steps of great dignity of form, has preserved 
 all the majestic simplicity of the architectural 
 style of the time of Louis XIII.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 61 
 
 In the days of my father and of Villiers, 
 the hotel was kept by a worthy couple whose 
 son was an artist, and hence, scattered through 
 the rooms, were tapestries, frescoes, pictures, 
 and trophies of arms, which heightened the 
 quaint air of the dwelling. 
 
 Hither, in the evenings, to a modest 
 apartment on the second floor, came some 
 dreamers, some thinkers, some philosophers. 
 Besides the face of Villiers, a second coun- 
 tenance, seen by chance at one of these 
 reunions, remains graven on my memory, 
 that of Leon Cladel. His mighty stature, 
 his long hair, his pallid complexion, his 
 gloomy countenance, his wild eyes, his 
 reddish-brown beard, really gave him that air 
 attributed to him by Catulle Mendes, of a 
 fallen angel. 
 
 He used to come with his friend Baude- 
 laire, whom, I am ashamed to say, I do not 
 recollect. 
 
 As my father was much occupied with 
 philosophy at this period of his life, the philo- 
 sophers were the most numerous and eager 
 guests at these gatherings, where much coffee
 
 62 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 was drunk, and an incalculable number of 
 pipes and cigarettes consumed. The host 
 was at that time passionately interested in 
 the German school of philosophy, which 
 soon laid hold of the profound mind of Vil- 
 liers de 1'Isle Adam. His friend initiated 
 him into the brilliant spiritualist theories of 
 Hegel, whose fervent disciple he was ; but 
 the humanitarian and socialistic projects of 
 the author of the " Poemes virils " found a 
 somewhat unfriendly auditor in Villiers. His 
 mind and soul soared too far above realities 
 to preoccupy themselves about the sufferings 
 of humanity or the miseries of real life. On 
 the other hand, the Titanic poetry, the breadth 
 and splendour of the views of the German 
 thinker, filled him with the greatest enthu- 
 siasm. He began to put forward the theories 
 of the speculative philosophy in the curious 
 tale of " Claire Lenoir," which I have already 
 spoken of. Some years later, in 1862, he 
 published the first volume of a mysterious 
 novel, " Isis," the continuation of which never 
 appeared, in which the Hegelian principles 
 and system are developed and carried out to
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 63 
 
 their extremest limit. This first volume, 
 entitled " Tullia Fabriana," was dedicated to 
 my father. It gained for its author some 
 expressions of admiration from Baudelaire, 
 which at this date may seem excessive. 
 
 In truth, this novel contains more faults 
 than good qualities. The passion for roman- 
 ticism of which Villiers never could rid him- 
 self, here breaks out in gloomy, improbable, 
 melodramatic adventures, worked out with 
 all the inexperience of a young hand. An 
 overflowing wealth of imagination does not 
 suffice to conceal the inherent vices of the 
 work. When the writer's talent had ripened, 
 and when time had calmed down the exube- 
 rance of his fancy, he himself recognized all 
 the imperfections of his early efforts, and 
 " I sis," which was originally to consist of six 
 volumes, was not continued. In the preface 
 to " Tullia Fabriana " the author thus ex- 
 presses himself: "'Isis' is the title of a 
 collection of works, which will appear, I hope, 
 at short intervals ; it is the collective formula 
 for a series of philosophical novels, the x 
 of a problem of the Ideal ; it is the great
 
 64 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 unknown : once finished, the work will be its 
 own definition." 
 
 The absolute need for oddity which seems 
 to be inherent in Villiers, is betrayed in 
 " Isis " in a very evident manner. The 
 eccentricities of its style attracted many jests 
 in the smaller papers. Already, at the appear- 
 ance of "Claire Lenoir" in the "Revue 
 Fantaisiste," the " Tintamarre " and other 
 satirical sheets had made copious game of 
 the strange expressions employed by the 
 young writer. One sentence especially had 
 become celebrated. It had been placed by 
 the author in the lips of Dr. Bonhomet him- 
 self, " Je lui fus grat de cette injure." Villiers 
 claimed that, as ingrat is the qualifying ad- 
 jective derived from the noun ingratitude, so 
 the adjective derived from gratitude must be 
 grat. Logically, reason was on his side, but 
 he doubtless forgot that the French language 
 laughs at logic. 
 
 This name of Bonhomet, coming back to 
 my pen, reminds me that this bold concep- 
 tion, which haunted Villiers' brain until his 
 death, is not purely imaginary. The Hotel
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 65 
 
 d' Orleans possessed at that time, as physician 
 
 in ordinary, a certain Dr. C , who had 
 
 the most ill-favoured countenance it is possible 
 to imagine. For the rest, he was an excellent 
 man, of a most charitable nature, and a very 
 distinguished savant. But his gloomy face, 
 a certain mode of expressing himself at once 
 whimsical and pompous, his positivism, his 
 disdainful scorn for any manifestation of art, 
 the extraordinary shape of his hats and cut of 
 his clothes, heated the poet's imagination. 
 Thenceforward, all unconscious, the worthy 
 
 Dr. C became a sort of dummy, on whose 
 
 frame Villiers hung, from day to day, all the 
 wily sophisms, all the strange fancies, all the 
 terrible or grotesque fads, which make the 
 savant Triboulat Bonhomet a unique type in 
 modern literature. 
 
 The first years in Paris (1859-1863) were 
 a most prolific period. Besides " Claire Le- 
 noir" and " Isis," the writer gave the public 
 two dramas full of gloomy splendour, which 
 were never acted " Ellen" and "Morgane." 
 There is a fine sentence in " Morgane," which 
 I desire to quote here, because it seems to me 
 
 F
 
 66 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 admirably characteristic not only of the style, 
 but of the turn of mind of Villiers de 1'Isle 
 Adam at this epoch : 
 
 " I drink to thee, O forest, thou giver of 
 oblivion ! To you, dew-laden grasses ! To 
 you, too, O wild roses ! growing beneath the 
 oaks, intoxicated by the moisture dripping 
 from their heavy foliage ! And to you, ye 
 wild sea-shores, where hover at eventide the 
 salt odours of the star-reflecting waves, and 
 who stretch away, like I myself, in pride and 
 solitude ! " 
 
 The author of " L'Eve Future " always 
 had this sense of being alone in the midst of 
 the world. " I have always," he wrote to me 
 a few years before his death, " felt alone, even 
 when beside a woman I loved, or with a 
 friend nay, even in the enthusiastically 
 affectionate circle of my own immediate 
 family." 
 
 While the son thus took his place in the 
 sunshine of literature, what became of the 
 proud marquis, the gentle saintly marquise, 
 the good aunt Kerinou, amidst all the noisy 
 whirl of Parisian life ? The marquis, still
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 67 
 
 possessed by his visions of wealth, had once 
 more taken up his lucrative speculations. He 
 was surrounded by a flight of birds of prey, 
 business agents, and such like, of strange and 
 lean appearance, who were engaged in sharing 
 amongst themselves the last remnants of his 
 
 o 
 
 patrimony. 
 
 He had established on his own account a 
 sort of branch of the Record Office, where, 
 with a fine, self-sufficient air, he gave out 
 brevets of nobility. Unfortunately his choice 
 of the persons he ennobled was not always 
 judicious ; and thus it came about that in the 
 course of the trial of the poisoner, Courty de 
 la Pommerais, the counsel for that doctor, 
 criminal enough, although a homoeopath, laid 
 before the tribunal a pompous certificate 
 signed by the Marquis Joseph de Villiers de 
 1'Isle Adam, Dean of the Order of the Knights 
 of Malta, and attesting the fact that the 
 
 7 o 
 
 accused, being of noble birth, had an incon- 
 testable right to bear the title of " comte " 
 (which title he had assumed in order to im- 
 pose upon his clients !). 
 
 Towards the end of 1863, somewhere about
 
 68 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 New Year's Day, my father took me, for the 
 first time, to visit the old Marquis and Mar- 
 quise de Villiers de 1'Isle Adam. They had 
 taken apartments in the Rue St. Honore, 
 close to the Place Vendome, in the house 
 now occupied, I believe, by the photographer, 
 M. Lejeune. I remember the drawing-room 
 was very large, very high up, with very 
 little furniture, and on that dark December 
 day it made one rather shivery. The mar- 
 quise appeared to me like a shadow ; she was 
 dressed in black, pale, sad, and distinguished- 
 looking. When my father spoke of Matthias, 
 her face beamed. She told us with a faint 
 smile that the marquis was at his business. 
 She added that her aunt Kerinou was ill in 
 bed, but that she would like to see us. In a 
 great old-fashioned bed, I perceived a little 
 old lady, whose doll-like face, framed in an 
 immense frilled cap, was all that could be 
 seen of her. She had a long, mobile nose, 
 and small bright eyes, and talked a great 
 deal. Certain phrases which fell perpetually 
 from her lips struck me, because they made 
 my father laugh in spite of himself. Her
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 69 
 
 intonation rests within my memory, and at 
 this moment I can hear the little clear tremu- 
 lous voice repeating, " You know, Hyacinthe, 
 Matthias is a famous man ! Matthias is going 
 to have a decoration. The emperor is going 
 to decorate Matthias. Matthias will be de- 
 corated." 
 
 I need hardly add that it was all a dream 
 of the old lady's. Nobody thought then, no 
 one has thought since, of giving the " Croix " 
 to the author of "Axel." Villiers de 1'Isle 
 Adam was one of those men whom no govern- 
 ment decorates.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The legend of the hoaxer hoaxed The succession 
 to the throne of Greece Villiers de 1'Isle Adam a 
 candidate for the throne" Le Lion de Numidie" 
 "The Moor of Venice" Nemesis An imperial 
 audience The Marquis and Baron Rothschild 
 The Due de Bassano and Villiers de ITsle Adam 
 The last a<5l of the comedy A poet's conclusion 
 Death of Aunt Kerinou Separation. 
 
 HERE is concerning this epoch in 
 the life of Villiers a wonderful 
 legend which has remained cele- 
 brated in the literary world ; but 
 in passing from mouth to mouth it has gone 
 through so many transformations, and fallen so 
 far from the truth, that it is necessary to re-esta- 
 blish it in its pristine simplicity. My readers 
 will perceive that the vis comica of the terrible 
 joke of which the young writer was a viclim 
 had no need of graces and embellishments.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 71 
 
 Here some words of preamble are needed, 
 and my frivolous pen must needs make an 
 excursion into the grave and wearisome realm 
 of contemporary political history. Be re- 
 assured, my reader ! it shall be but a short one. 
 
 In the year of grace, 1863, then, a time 
 at which the imperial government shone 
 with its brightest radiance, the Hellenic nation 
 happened to be in want of a king. The 
 great powers who protected the heroic little 
 nation to which Byron had sacrificed his life, 
 France, Russia, and England, looked about 
 for a young constitutional tyrant whom they 
 might confer on their prottgte. Napoleon III. 
 had at that epoch the casting vote in the 
 council, and men were asking themselves 
 anxiously whether he would put forward a 
 candidate, and whether that candidate would 
 be a Frenchman. Briefly, the newspapers 
 were full of stories about, and comments on 
 this absorbing subject : the Greek question 
 was the question of the hour. The news- 
 mongers could fearlessly give free rein to 
 their imagination, for whilst the other nations 
 seemed to have fixed their definite choice on
 
 72 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 the son of the King of Denmark, the emperor 
 so justly named "the taciturn prince " by the 
 friend of his dark days, Charles Dickens 
 the emperor, I say, held his peace, and let 
 his decision be waited for. 
 
 Thus matters stood, when one morning 
 early in March the tall marquis burst like a 
 whirlwind into the dreary drawing-room in the 
 Rue St. Honore brandishing a newspaper, and 
 in an indescribable state of excitement, soon 
 to be shared by all his family. This was the 
 strange news registered that day in the 
 columns of several Parisian newspapers : 
 " We learn on good authority that a new 
 candidature has just been announced for the 
 throne of Greece. The candidate this time 
 is a French grand seigneur well known all 
 over Paris the Comte Philippe Auguste 
 de Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, last descendant of 
 the august line which has produced the heroic 
 defender of Rhodes and the first Grand Master 
 of the Knights of Malta. At the emperor's 
 last private reception, one of his intimates 
 having inquired concerning the probability of 
 this candidate's success, his majesty smiled
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 73 
 
 enigmatically. The new aspirant to kingly 
 honours has our best wishes." 
 
 Those who have followed me so far will 
 easily imagine the effe<5t produced on imagi- 
 nations like those of the Villiers family by 
 such a perusal. Already they beheld their 
 Matthias entering Athens, dressed in black 
 velvet, proudly seated on a white charger, 
 surrounded by his splendid Palikares ! 
 
 As for Matthias himself, he took it all very 
 seriously, though he doubted of ultimate 
 success. 
 
 " Sire ! " said the old marquis gravely, as 
 he majestically buttoned his coat, worn white 
 with wear, " money is the one thing you want ! 
 Your majesty's father will see you get it ! 
 Farewell ! I am going to see Rothschild ! " 
 
 He went, and was seen no more for a week. 
 
 But let me quickly explain the origin of 
 this extraordinary adventure. It might truly 
 be called the hoaxer hoaxed, with the quali- 
 fication, however, that the hoaxee would 
 never believe in a hoax at all. 
 
 In the days when Villiers was the chief 
 figure of the little circle at the Rue de Douai
 
 74 VILLIERS DE. L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 and of some literary caboulets (as were then 
 called certain cafes where writers congregated), 
 he had a rival, a splendid fellow with pale 
 skin, eagle eyes, and a thick black head of 
 hair, whom the Parnassians nicknamed " Le 
 Lion de Numidie," although he only hailed 
 from Montpellier. I will call him by no other 
 name, for since those days the lion has clipped 
 his mane, cut his claws, and done public 
 penance to society ! Gifted with a wonderful 
 constitution, with delightful spirits and good 
 temper, with a much-dreaded shrewdness and 
 surprising powers of observation, this jolly 
 Colossus would have been invulnerable, had 
 he not been afflicted with a vanity as strange 
 as it was unwarrantable. 
 
 The Numidian lion had pretensions to 
 being an admirable aclor, and never lost an 
 opportunity of showing off his talent for 
 mimicry and his powers of declamation. 
 Villiers, who had already practised that ter- 
 rible, cold, and serious irony, which makes all 
 the weaknesses of human nature its target, 
 soon perceived the weak place in his jolly 
 boon companion's armour. He longed for a
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 75 
 
 joke, insinuated himself into the lion's good 
 graces, and by degrees succeeded in putting 
 him off his guard. He then explained to him 
 that some friends of his were desirous of 
 playing the " Moor of Venice " on a stage hired 
 for that purpose, but that they could find no 
 one capable of undertaking the part of Othello, 
 and the more so as it was absolutely neces- 
 sary, to keep the local colour, that the aclor 
 should stain his face and arms black. " Don't 
 let that hinder you," cried his friend boldly ; 
 " I am your man ; here is my hand on it!" 
 With astonishing patience and gravity, Villiers 
 helped his friend to rehearse, and told him 
 where to get " made up." Then a dress 
 rehearsal was called, to take place at the 
 usual trysting-place of the band of poets. I 
 need not say there never had been a question 
 of playing Shakespeare's masterpiece, but, 
 all the same, Villiers had summoned all the 
 poets, "horse, foot, and dragoon." When 
 Othello, in his splendid dress, his hands and 
 face as black as those of the King of Dahomey, 
 made his entrance, a general shout went up at 
 the sight of the Numidian lion, who richly
 
 76 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 justified his title. The Prover^al was too 
 sharp not to perceive at once that he had 
 been duped. He took it well, and was the 
 first to laugh at his own strange get-up, but 
 anyone who intercepted the look with which 
 he favoured the descendant of the Grand 
 Master of the Order of Malta could have 
 foretold his speedy revenge. He remained 
 Villiers' friend, and in his turn discovered 
 the defe6l in his coat of mail. Then it was 
 that he laid a snare for his vanity, his patri- 
 cian pride, his foolish family pretensions, 
 which almost betokened genius. The son of 
 the treasure- seeker was to be seduced by the 
 mirage of the throne and royal crown then 
 sparkling on the horizon ! The perpetrator of 
 the hoax had made his calculations admirably : 
 the candidature of Villiers de 1'Isle Adam 
 could not seem anything abnormal to the 
 public. The name was illustrious and high- 
 sounding ; it was not impossible, therefore, 
 that the sovereign, desirous of placing on the 
 Greek throne a monarch who owed every- 
 thing to him, might choose amongst the 
 flower of the French nobility a person on
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 77 
 
 whom he designed to bestow a crown. The 
 thing only became improbable, laughable, 
 and grotesque, when one knew the two 
 chief personages, the king, and the king's 
 father. 
 
 Many people were taken in, and the ex- 
 pectant king soon received the usual avalanche 
 of begging letters. 
 
 Our Matthias did not remain idle, nor dally 
 with his golden dream. This throne which 
 glistened with gems and precious stones 
 through the blue smoke-clouds of his ciga- 
 rette, tempted him much more than he 
 acknowledged to himself. Instigated by his 
 good friends, who were laughing at him in 
 their sleeves, he drew up a request for an audi- 
 ence, and sent it to the Tuileries. Some days 
 afterwards, a magnificent estafette drew up 
 before the house in the Rue St. Honore, and 
 gave to the astonished concierge a letter sealed 
 with the imperial arms, and addressed to the 
 Comte Villiers de 1'Isle Adam; the audience 
 was granted, and fixed for an early date. 
 
 For the first and only time in his life, the 
 poet found a tailor who gave him credit. He
 
 78 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 ordered a sumptuous evening coat, with all its 
 appendages, and then he shut himself up in 
 his own room, to study before the glass his 
 entry, his gestures, and the speech which he 
 would address to the sovereign. 
 
 On his side, the terrible Southern, in whose 
 ear Nemesis ceaselessly whispered, did not 
 lose his time. Every day one or two news- 
 papers contained some paragraph concerning 
 the " French candidate." It was announced 
 that the emperor was about to receive him : 
 it was related that his father, the marquis, 
 had had a long and cordial interview with 
 Baron Rothschild. But where the Numidian 
 lion really showed the wisdom of the serpent, 
 was in his manner of preparing his victim for 
 the impending audience. The writer, who was 
 then in the throes of his novel, " Isis," had 
 his imagination filled with those gloomy ad- 
 ventures which give such a romantic and 
 mysterious colour to the history of Italian 
 principalities in the sixteenth century. He 
 dreamt of nothing but palaces full of murderous 
 snares, whose walls opened, whose ceilings 
 descended, whose floors gaped, to stifle or en-
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 79 
 
 tomb the imprudent mortals who allowed 
 themselves to be allured into the luxurious 
 and fatal dwellings of tyrants and princes. 
 The contriver of the trick took admirable 
 advantage of the predisposition of his viclim ; 
 he reminded him that the familiars of the 
 Tuileries were not over-scrupulous ; he told 
 him a heap of tragic anecdotes relating to the 
 morrow of the second of December, and hav- 
 ing as their scene this palace, which, accord- 
 ing to him, was as full of trap-doors as an 
 operatic stage. Many people, he insinuated, 
 who had entered that little door on the Place 
 du Carrousel have never been seen to come 
 out ; so let Villiers beware, for if any favourite 
 had an interest in his disappearance, a trap- 
 door, a dungeon, might open suddenly under 
 his feet. Above all, he must absolutely refuse 
 to explain himself to any but the emperor 
 himself! 
 
 At last the great day came, and poor Mat- 
 thias, very pale and agitated in his brand-new 
 clothes, got into a hired carriage, and drove 
 away to the Tuileries ; before starting, he 
 made his will, and sent it to my father.
 
 8o VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 It is difficult to tell exactly what passed at 
 the Tuileries : Villiers' version is so impressed 
 with romance that it is not easy to disentangle 
 the real from the imaginary. What seems 
 certain is that the poet was received by the 
 Due de Bassano, who at that time fulfilled 
 the functions of Grand Chamberlain of the 
 Palace. Doubtless the old diplomatist tried 
 to fathom Matthias's intentions by clever 
 questioning, but he found himself confronted 
 by a personage unlike any he had ever met 
 in his long and adventurous career. As for 
 the poet, his already heated imagination soon 
 carried him into oblivion of his present where- 
 abouts, to believe himself the hero of one of 
 those dark and mysterious court intrigues, the 
 dramatic histories of which he had lately been 
 perusing. He refused to utter, would scarcely 
 put his foot down without insulting precautions, 
 responded coldly to the advances of his inter- 
 locutor, upon whom he cast glances and deeply 
 significant smiles which were quite unintel- 
 ligible to the chamberlain, and finally stated, 
 courteously but firmly, that he was resolved 
 to speak to nobody but the emperor himself.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 81 
 
 " I must ask you, then, to take the trouble of 
 coming another time, count," said the duke, 
 rising; "his majesty is engaged, and com- 
 missioned me to receive you." 
 
 There is no doubt that the chamberlain 
 took the man of genius for a lunatic, and, in 
 spite of my admiration for the author of 
 " L'Eve Future," I cannot wonder at it. Vil- 
 liers used to relate that he was escorted 
 through the apartments to the staircase by 
 two muscular and threatening fellows dressed 
 in black, and that he expected every moment 
 to be cast into a dungeon. " For," he would 
 add, " I saw, the instant I entered, that Bas- 
 sano had been gained over to the son of the 
 King of Denmark, and that his obje6t in sum- 
 moning me to the Tuileries was to get rid of an 
 inconvenient and dangerous rival ; but my cold- 
 ness, my dignity, the good style and modera- 
 tion of my words, doubtless impressed the 
 Sbirri, and I was allowed to depart in peace." 
 
 The claimant went home with hanging 
 head, in great terror of the secret police, 
 fancying he was going to be arrested, thrown 
 into prison, and perhaps put to death. 
 
 G
 
 82 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 He barricaded himself into his room, and 
 never left it for a week. At last the news- 
 papers put an end to his anxieties and his 
 ambitious hopes, by announcing the final 
 nomination of his fortunate rival, the second 
 son of King Christian IX., who ascended 
 the throne of Greece under the title of 
 George I. 
 
 The last a<5l of the comedy had been played 
 out, the curtain fell, but the principal actor 
 never would believe that it was all mere fancy. 
 He never doubted but that he had had the 
 most serious chance of success ; and to the 
 last day of his life he would describe, in his 
 picturesque and glowing conversation, the 
 splendid things that he would have accom- 
 plished, if fortune had favoured him, and he 
 had become king. 
 
 Reader, you may laugh ! but yet, would 
 much harm have been done ? would the 
 Greeks have been less happy, if a gentle poet 
 had borne the sceptre of the country which 
 saw Aphrodite's immortal beauty rise from 
 the sparkling, foam-crested sea-waves the 
 country of Homer, of ^Eschylus, of Anacreon,
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 83 
 
 of Aristophanes ? Doubtless, the reign of 
 Matthias would not have resembled that of 
 our late highly-respectable Louis Philippe, 
 but perhaps, fired by his genius, the Greece 
 of Miltiades and Themistocles, of Marathon 
 and Salamis, might have felt her ancient soul 
 stir within her ! The poet's kingdom is not 
 alas ! of this world, and his crown is a thorny 
 one. And what, indeed, is a throne that it 
 should be so eagerly desired ? The hero of 
 this adventure has told us in some very beau- 
 tiful lines : let them form the conclusion of 
 this veracious history. 
 
 " Un trone pour celui qui reve, 
 Un trone est bien sombre aujourd'hui. 
 Faite des vanites humaines, 
 A ses pieds saignent bien des haines, 
 Souvent il voile bien des peines ! 
 La foule obscure reste au seuil : 
 Sapin couvert d'hermines blanches. 
 II a sceptre et lauriers pour branches ; 
 II est forme de quatre planches 
 Absolument comme un cercueil ! " 
 
 1 " To him whose life is full of dreams 
 A throne is now a dreary seat. 
 Summit of earthly vanity, 
 By bloody hatreds girt about,
 
 84 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 The old aunt, Mdlle. Kerinou, never rose 
 from the great canopied bed in which I saw 
 her at the end of that memorable year, for the 
 first and only time in my life. Her pure and 
 simple soul took wing to the gardens of Para- 
 dise, escorted by all her hopes and illusions. 
 The departure of the good old lady was a ter- 
 rible event for the Villiers de 1'Isle family ; 
 up to now, thanks to her income, it had been 
 possible to pursue the jog-trot journey of life 
 without too many jolts, but her fortune, being 
 for the most part in an annuity, necessarily 
 died with her, and at her death these poor 
 Bretons, exiled in cruel, terrible Paris, saw 
 the ghost of penury rise up before them. 
 The dwelling in the Rue St. Honore was 
 given up, and the furniture sold. The mar- 
 quise went back to the country, in the hope 
 of raising some funds ; the marquis was a quia. 
 He had (in connection with a wild society for 
 
 It cloaks full oft the bitterest griefs, 
 Unrecked of by the common herd. 
 It's like some ermine-covered pine, 
 Whose branches crown and sceptre make, 
 And coffin-like, the thing is built, 
 Hollow, and formed of planks of wood ! "
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 85 
 
 working some problematic bitumen lakes) 
 made acquaintance with the police court. I 
 hasten to add that he left it with head eredl 
 and clean hands, but his pockets were utterly 
 empty. Father and son separated, and Villiers 
 went to live alone, to begin that sad pilgrimage 
 through Parisian lodging-houses, which lasted 
 all his life, and closed in the Rue Oudinot, under 
 the roof of the Brotherhood of St. J ean de Dieu. 
 
 Soon after, I left Paris and the College 
 Rollin, where I had completed my studies, to 
 enter an English university. For me, too, 
 the battle of life was beginning. Thence- 
 forward I only heard of Villiers from time to 
 time. I used to read his books, which he sent 
 to my father, and often the newspapers re- 
 ported his eccentricities and his deep sayings 
 f.o me. On that interior stage which we all 
 bear within us, and which men call memory, 
 he appeared to me as a legendary personage, 
 full of strange attraction, and I liked to make 
 my father tell me every story he knew about 
 our cousin Matthias. 
 
 Certainly I little thought then, that these 
 recollections and anecdotes would help me in
 
 86 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 my riper age to call up and bring to life the 
 genial figure of the great Breton artist. 
 
 Neither did I suspe<5t that, some years later, 
 this great artist would become my own most 
 revered teacher, my surest, most faithful, and 
 most precious friend. But so it was to be. 
 During three years, from 1877 to 1880, we 
 lived side by side in an absolute and constant 
 intellectual intimacy. And if, even now, the 
 love of the ideal and of the imperishably 
 beautiful consoles me for much that is horrible, 
 much that is wretched, much that is mediocre 
 and unworthy, it is to Villiers de 1'Isle Adam 
 that I owe it ; he it is, who, on those dark 
 nights, when our feet trod the mud of Lutetia, 
 eloquently pointed out to me the starry way. 
 
 In order then to conclude these notes, it 
 remains for me to relate that part of the poet's 
 life of which I was the almost daily witness.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 My return to Paris The Hotel d'Orleans My search 
 for Villiers Our reunion The earlier stages 
 of his lawsuit The historical drama of "Perrinet 
 Leclerc " Paul Cleves, director of the Porte 
 St. Martin Theatre The Marechal Jean de 1'Isle 
 Adam, according to Messrs. Lockroy and Anicet 
 Bourgeois Villiers' fury Letters to the press A 
 summons A memorandum Intervention of M. de 
 Villiers Provocation A duel arranged Settlement 
 on the ground Result of the aclion Biographer's 
 reservations Documentary evidence. 
 
 OWARDS the autumn of 1876, at 
 the close of a long journey in 
 Switzerland, I returned to Paris, 
 my eyes still dazzled by the 
 glamour of virgin snows, inaccessible peaks, 
 glistening glaciers, and the great blue lake 
 wherein melancholy Chillon reflects its gloomy 
 keep. Through that land of mountain, fir-
 
 88 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 wood, and torrent, the spirit of my father, 
 whose death I yet mourned, had been with 
 me everywhere, teaching me the better to 
 appreciate and admire the sublimity of those 
 landscapes for which he had always had a sort 
 of passionate fondness. My entry into France 
 was still haunted by the paternal presence, 
 and I hurried to the old Hotel d' Orleans, 
 where we had spent so many years together, 
 while I, alas ! was too young and frivolous to 
 profit by the counsels of that wise and gene- 
 rous mind. Whether it was by chance, or by 
 a delicate attention on the part of the old host 
 of the inn, I know not, but I was given my 
 father's old room, and my first night was 
 haunted by the shadows of the past. During 
 those silent watches I lived through many an 
 episode of my schoolboy days again, and many 
 familiar faces passed before my eyes, some 
 faintly looming in the shadow and as quickly 
 disappearing, others clearly outlined and con- 
 stantly recurring. Amongst these last, the 
 big fair head of Villiers de 1'Isle Adam con- 
 stantly reappeared, his eyes seeming to gaze 
 on me intently, and to reproach me with my
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 89 
 
 long neglect. Ah, no ! I had not, indeed, 
 forgotten him. But the adventures and wor- 
 ries of life had up to this prevented me from 
 seeking him out, and, since the childish days 
 already referred to, I had never beheld him. 
 But I resolved not to leave Paris this time 
 without finding him, and binding our two 
 selves together with bonds as strong and as 
 affectionate as those which had once united 
 him and my father. 
 
 The next evening, before the dinner hour, 
 I sought him along the boulevard. Every 
 habitiUt every lounger, from the Cafe" de la 
 Paix to the Cafe de Madrid, knew Villiers de 
 1'Isle Adam, but nobody knew where he lived, 
 nor could tell where he might be found. He 
 was, so they said, peculiarly a night-bird, and 
 almost all those who mentioned him to me had 
 made his acquaintance at unearthly hours, 
 in out-of-the-way brasseries. None of this 
 information was of much service to me, and I 
 was beginning rather to despair, when a sud- 
 den downpour of rain drove me to take refuge 
 in the entry of the Passage Gouffroy. I was 
 mechanically watching the play of light and
 
 90 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 shade caused by the shower, when suddenly, 
 and without an instant's hesitation, in spite of 
 the lapse of years, in spite of the change which 
 the fight for existence had wrought in his 
 appearance, I recognized him ! There are 
 some strong individualities which age, care, 
 even sickness, cannot alter. They are un- 
 changeable. And Villiers was one of these. 
 
 He was coming into the passage from the 
 rear, a big bundle of manuscript under his 
 arm, with that elastic yet hesitating tread I 
 so well remembered, taking quick, short steps, 
 looking preoccupied and flurried at once, as 
 he passed through the throng. 
 
 Poor great poet ! judging by his hat, which 
 was worn red with age, the thin threadbare 
 frock-coat which concealed his shirt, the 
 trousers with their frayed hem, Fortune, that 
 jade, had treated him with condign scorn. 
 What matter! As he came towards me, I 
 read neither discouragement nor despair upon 
 his ageing features. There was the same pale 
 uncertain blue eye, lost in its dream, and 
 beneath the fair moustache, already turning 
 grey, the full mouth smiled as at some secret
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 91 
 
 vision. He was, in good sooth, far from earth 
 at that moment, and there seemed to me some- 
 thing proud and noble, amidst that jostling, 
 pushing crowd of wet, muddy, common-look- 
 ing passers-by, in the scornful indifference of 
 the great thinker to the human rabble through 
 which he passed, all unseeing, like the sleep- 
 walker of some oriental tale. 
 
 As he drew near to me, the memory of our 
 first meeting in the dining-room of the old 
 house at Fougeres came back to me, and 
 touching his shoulder gently, I addressed him 
 with a slight variation of the words he used 
 when he found me, a child in disgrace, eating 
 my solitary breakfast at the deserted family 
 board : " Good morning, cousin ! you don't 
 know me. I am your cousin Robert !" 
 
 He started like a man suddenly roused from 
 sleep, and raised his eyes to mine. His usually 
 lustreless glance brightened ; we fell into each 
 other's arms, and embraced shamelessly coram 
 populo. Doubtless Heaven smiled on our re- 
 union, for the setting sun was making the 
 wet pavements and roofs shine again, as arm 
 in arm we went out upon the boulevards.
 
 92 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 It was during that first evening's converse, 
 which cemented the friendship of our man- 
 hood's years, that Villiers de 1'Isle Adam 
 recounted to me the earlier stages of the 
 strange action which he was about to bring 
 against the Lockroy family and the heirs of 
 the melodramatic playwright, Anicet Bour- 
 geois a most fantastic lawsuit, which 
 amused and interested all Paris for several 
 months, and of which I desire now to relate 
 the apparently improbable incidents. 
 
 It happened, then, one winter evening in 
 1876, that my cousin Matthias was dreaming 
 along the Boulevard du Crime, when, as he 
 passed before the Porte St. Martin Theatre, 
 its facade, lighted up as it usually was on 
 important occasions, attracted his attention. 
 He drew near to the advertisement boards, 
 and started on seeing, below the title of the 
 play of which a reproduction was to be given 
 that night, " Perrinet Leclerc," an historical 
 drama in five acts, by Messrs. Lockroy and 
 Anicet Bourgeois, the name of his own illus- 
 trious ancestor, the Marshal Jean de Villiers 
 de 1'Isle Adam, occupying a line by itself.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 93 
 
 " What ! " roared the poet, " they have put 
 the glorious marshal on the stage unknown 
 to me? Ha! ha! We'll have some fun!" 
 and he hastened to the box office. 
 
 The Porte St. Martin Theatre was at that 
 time under the management of a very worthy 
 fellow of the name of Paul Cleves, who had 
 been in his time a good actor, and who, 
 though not literary himself, was full of 
 respectful admiration for the literary merits 
 of others. He had a reverence not unmixed 
 with awe for the eccentric genius of Villiers, 
 and the moment he saw him he hurried with 
 outstretched hands to meet him and place 
 him in the managerial box, so that he might 
 not lose a word nor a gesture of the actor 
 personifying that famous warrior whose de- 
 scendant the poet was. But, after the second 
 act, Villiers reappeared in the unfortunate 
 Cleves' private room, pale, trembling, and 
 bristling with fury. "Sir!" he cried, with a 
 tragic gesture, "two ignorant and conceited 
 clowns, Lockroy and Bourgeois, have en- 
 deavoured to degrade one of the most illus- 
 trious warriors of the fourteenth century,
 
 94 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 whose name it is my glory to bear, and 
 whose reputation it is my duty to defend ! 
 You have allowed this infamy to be com- 
 mitted, and I call upon you, sir, to withdraw 
 the play to-morrow." 
 
 " But, my dear Villiers, it is impossible ! " 
 cried Cleves, when he had recovered from his 
 profound astonishment, " consider ! it would be 
 my ruin. It would be certain bankruptcy ! 
 my engagements " 
 
 "Ruin, bankruptcy, engagements! These 
 are nothing to me. You should have 
 warned me before you accepted this non- 
 sensical stuff." 
 
 " I never accepted it. It has been in the 
 repertory since 1834!" 
 
 " Enough, sir. I understand you to refuse ? 
 Very good, I shall apply to the authors the 
 authors, I say. Where are the authors ? " 
 
 " They are dead !" 
 
 " Well for them ! But they must have left 
 children, heirs, representatives. That cur, 
 that Simon, whose name is not even Lockroy, 
 has a descendant who has made stir enough in 
 this third Republic of yours ! Well, we shall
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 95 
 
 see ! For the last time, Cleves, do you refuse 
 to withdraw the play ? " 
 
 The Unlucky manager had become speech- 
 less, but he made a sign with his head which 
 seemed to signify that it was impossible to 
 grant such a request. 
 
 " Very well, then," said the poet, " you 
 and your accomplices shall hear from me ! " 
 And he went out in a fury. 
 
 Those who can recollect Villiers de 1'Isle 
 Adam's idolatrous worship for the memory of 
 his ancestors will understand this outbreak of 
 rage when I state that this unlucky so-called 
 historical drama by Messrs. Lockroy and 
 Bourgeois represented the Marechal de 1'Isle 
 Adam as a disloyal nobleman and an abomi- 
 nable traitor traitor, not in favour of the Duke 
 of Burgundy, nor of the Duke of Orleans, 
 but traitor to his own country, to his poor 
 mad king, delivering both over to the English 
 power, and aiding Henry V. to place upon his 
 own head the crown torn from that of the 
 rightful sovereign. All this was absolutely 
 contrary to the truth. Jean de 1'Isle Adam, 
 the friend and right-hand man of the Duke
 
 96 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 of Burgundy, was, it is true, the most ardent 
 partisan of John the Bold, and took possession 
 of Paris in his name. As to the English, 
 Jean refused the splendid offers of Henry V., 
 who cast him into the Bastille, whence he 
 only emerged after that prince's death. 
 Thenceforward he warred ceaselessly against 
 the British, from whom he recaptured Pon- 
 toise in 1435. Such are the historical facts 
 of the case. But the authors of " Perrinet 
 Leclerc" cared little for that. To those 
 makers of melodramas, history was but a 
 mine to supply their own lack of imagina- 
 tion, and its personages merely obliging 
 dummies, to be dressed up in glory or 
 infamy, according to the needs of their case. 
 They wanted a traitor, and they simply took 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, in all good faith, 
 never dreaming that there would appear, five 
 hundred years after the fulfilment of the 
 events they were putting on the stage, in this 
 fin-de-siecle and gaping Paris of ours, a poet 
 who was ready to make himself the champion 
 and the vigorous defender of his outraged 
 ancestor !
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 97 
 
 Never did Villiers show such activity, such 
 physical and moral energy, as in the course of 
 this business. For my own part, my know- 
 ledge of him leads me to the opinion that, in 
 spite of all his indignation, he rather enjoyed 
 the adventure. The excitement of the judi- 
 cial struggle, the newspaper polemics, the 
 ransacking of libraries both far and near, put 
 a new interest into his life, and freed his mind 
 for a while from the dreams which so inces- 
 santly haunted it. And that arch-scoffer must 
 have felt a curious secret amusement in 
 obliging all that army of solicitors, barristers, 
 judges, and their deputies, to occupy them- 
 selves with the affairs of an illustrious old 
 gentleman who had been dead for four hun- 
 dred and fifty years, to decipher the quaint 
 and incomprehensible manuscripts of the 
 thirteenth century, and to busy themselves, 
 under the reign of Grevy, Wilson, and 
 Co., with the concerns of Charles VI. the 
 Bienaime, of John the Bold, and of the fatally 
 fascinating Isabeau of Bavaria. 
 
 But to begin at the beginning. The very 
 morning after that memorable performance, 
 
 H
 
 98 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 there appeared in several daily papers a 
 haughty and indignant letter from the last of 
 the De 1'Isle Adams, in which he brilliantly 
 vindicated his right to defend his illustrious 
 relative from opprobrium. He blasted in a few 
 scorching phrases, conceived in ineffable scorn 
 for all dealers in such second-hand literary 
 wares, the work of the two unlucky collabora- 
 tors ; and he finally declared that he was 
 about to appeal to the laws of the country to 
 obtain for them the chastisement of their 
 crime of treason against the national glory. 
 There was much giggling along the boule- 
 vards at the poet's new freak. The collateral 
 heirs of the acting rights of the play turned a 
 deaf ear to his threat, and " Perrinet Leclerc " 
 still held the bills, its success much increased 
 by this fresh puff. Forward, then, the 
 officers, the formalities, the dusty papers, all 
 the creaking machinery of the law ! A clever 
 and intelligent young barrister, an acquain- 
 tance of Villiers, eagerly seized on this oppor- 
 tunity of distinguishing himself; for this action 
 was to stir both the law courts and the boule- 
 vards, and those who had to do with it soon 
 became famous.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 99 
 
 The representatives of Lockroy and of 
 Anicet Bourgeois had to file their answer to 
 the summons duly served upon them a sum- 
 mons praying- that they might be forbidden to 
 continue the performances of a play wherein 
 they libelled and calumniated the direcl; ances- 
 tor of the plaintiff, "the said Philippe Auguste 
 Matthias de Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, man of 
 letters, which summons has been personally 
 delivered at the defendants' house. Here- 
 with a copy, whereof the price," etc., etc., etc. 
 
 The defendants' answer was rather clever. 
 They asked the tribunal to rule that the 
 plaintiff's plea was inadmissible : firstly, be- 
 cause he offered no proof of his boasted direct 
 descent from the illustrious house of Villiers 
 de 1'Isle Adam ; secondly, because the chro- 
 nicles of the time, and notably that of the Monk 
 of St. Denis, authorized the writers of " Per- 
 rinet Leclerc " in presenting the conduct of 
 the Marshal de 1'Isle Adam during the civil 
 wars of the reign of Charles VI. in an un- 
 favourable light ; thirdly, because the said 
 Marshal de 1'Isle Adam being an historical 
 personage, any writer might criticise or praise
 
 ioo VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 him, according to conscience or personal 
 opinion, without being liable to any action on 
 that score. Thus the fight began. 
 
 And now, for some weeks, Matthias was 
 undiscoverable. He buried himself in the 
 libraries and the archives, amongst which his 
 clear mind called up all that gloomy and 
 romantic period which began at the infancy 
 of Charles VI. and ended on the day when 
 Jeanne d'Arc led the weak-kneed Charles VI I. 
 to Rheims, to be anointed king. When the 
 lawsuit began, nothing remained to Villiers 
 of the family inheritance. Pressed by poverty, 
 father and son had parted with everything ; 
 but they still preserved the precious family 
 archives, and the poet possessed irrefragable 
 proof of his descent. 
 
 When, therefore, he had sufficiently studied 
 the formidable heap of documents bearing on 
 the ten years of civil war which stained the 
 close of the reign of Charles VI., he prayed 
 leave to support his request against the 
 authors of " Perrinet Leclerc " : firstly, by the 
 proof, resting on authentic records, of his de- 
 scent from that Marshal de 1'Isle Adam whose
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 101 
 
 honour he claimed to defend ; secondly, by 
 proving that no contemporary chronicler gave 
 to his ancestor that odious character which 
 Messrs. Lockroy and Bourgeois had dared to 
 make him play in the history of his time. 
 And, he added, if it was true that the so-called 
 Chronicle of the Monk of St. Denis did con- 
 tain a sentence which permitted any doubt on 
 that score, it was established, on the other 
 hand, that these memoirs had no character 
 for authenticity, that they were held in sus- 
 picion by all competent historians, and that, 
 in any case, it was sufficient to read the manu- 
 script to be convinced that it was a partial 
 work, and that its author belonged to that 
 faction which was hostile to the Duke of 
 Burgundy, the friend of De 1'Isle Adam. 
 
 To this second appeal Villiers added a long 
 memorandum, addressed to the judges. I do 
 not know what has become of this manuscript. 
 I hope that those persons who have under- 
 taken, with so much zeal and devotion, the 
 posthumous publication of the works of the 
 author of "Axel," may have it in their pos- 
 session. In it the great writer appears in a
 
 102 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 new light. This sketch of the life of the 
 Marshal de 1'Isle Adam is a masterpiece of 
 clearness and style, a gifted and magnificent 
 word-picture of the end of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, a strong and closely-reasoned piece of 
 work, in which the fervent eloquence of his 
 pleading for the thesis he defends never fetters 
 the critical and investigating faculty of its 
 author. 
 
 Thus matters stood when I joined Villiers 
 in Paris. The adversaries were armed at all 
 points, and only waited the close of the vaca- 
 tion to go before the courts. 
 
 All at once, an unexpected event, a tragi- 
 comic incident, gave a fresh interest to the 
 affair. 
 
 I have related, in the early pages of these 
 recollections, how a family bearing the name 
 of Villiers, but which had shown no proof of 
 direct descent from the Grand Master of the 
 Knights of Malta, had been authorized, at the 
 time of the return of the Bourbons, to add the 
 name of L'Isle Adam to its own patronymic. 
 Just as our Villiers was emerging from his 
 tent, armed cap a pit, and lance in rest, to
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 103 
 
 defend his ancestral glory and good fame 
 against the calumnies of two playwrights, the 
 representative of this other family, a young 
 officer, very proud of the great name he bore, 
 and exceedingly ignorant, as it seems, of his 
 real origin, returned from Africa. Honestly 
 believing himself the scion of those heroes 
 who had shed glory on the name of De 1'Isle 
 Adam, his rage and stupefaction may be 
 imagined when, hardly had he arrived home, 
 ere his friends and relations placed before him 
 various newspapers, which reported with much 
 comment, and wit seasoned with Attic salt, the 
 particulars of the action brought by the high- 
 born poet against the guilty authors of " Per- 
 rinet Leclerc." Incredible as it seems in 
 these days, when the press penetrates every- 
 where, the young warrior appears to have 
 ignored till then the existence of one of the 
 best-known literary men in Paris. He fancied 
 the author of " Isis " to be some scribbling 
 adventurer who had picked up for himself, out 
 of history, a name which he believed to be ex- 
 tinct. In the heat of his indignation, he wrote 
 a letter to a great daily paper, and as the
 
 104 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 officer knew more about the cavalry sword- 
 exercise than about the amenities of our 
 beautiful French language, his communication 
 was at once plain-spoken, rude, and aggres- 
 sive, claiming his right to bear the name of 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, and avowing that 
 any other person calling himself by that 
 name usurped it. This warlike missive soon 
 appeared, and forthwith all the venomous 
 small fry of the press, all the envious scrib- 
 blers, all the failures whom Villiers' talent 
 had overshadowed, and whom his bitter jests 
 had wounded, pounced upon this lucky wind- 
 fall. Along the boulevards, from the Made- 
 leine to the Gymnase, at the hour of the 
 absinthe queen, their little poisonous speeches 
 were to be heard on every side : " That poor 
 Villiers ! Don't you know ? Not De 1'Isle 
 Adam at all ! It was a name he took ! / 
 always thought so ! It seems he is really the 
 son of a small grocer at Guingamp." 
 
 Ah ! why cannot we sear the lips of slan- 
 derers with a red-hot iron ? Shame on those 
 dastards ! for this time at least they managed 
 to pierce my friend to the heart. All those
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 105 
 
 who knew him well, knew that beneath his 
 strange exterior and his cold mask of scorn 
 Villiers had a noble ardent soul, which must 
 have suffered cruelly under the thousand 
 anonymous stings which were inflicted on his 
 pride. But the blood of the marshal and the 
 grand master boiled in his veins, and on the 
 very day of the insult the officer was waited 
 upon by two poet-friends of the writer, who 
 came from the Comte Philippe Auguste de 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam to demand reparation 
 for the outrage offered to their principal. 
 The adversary was brave, and accepted 
 without flinching the meeting which was 
 proposed to him ; and the seconds having 
 conferred, it was arranged that all should go, 
 armed with swords, the day after the next 
 following, on a little expedition to the neigh- 
 bourhood of Vesinet. Meanwhile, one of the 
 seconds of Matthias, a sensible man, though 
 a violent Parnassian, struck by the exceed- 
 ingly correct demeanour of the other party, 
 thought it might not be altogether useless to 
 submit to him certain genealogical proofs 
 which would demonstrate to him that right
 
 io6 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 was not altogether on his side, as he fancied. 
 After a severe struggle he induced Villiers to 
 lend him those famous and precious family 
 documents for the space of twenty-four hours, 
 and sent them to the cavalry lieutenant with 
 an urgent request that he would read them 
 before the hour fixed for the meeting. The 
 result was amazing. M. de Villiers was a 
 loyal, good-hearted, and very chivalrous man. 
 He appeared on the ground at the appointed 
 hour, advanced towards the real Villiers de 
 1'Isle Adam, made him a bow, and offered 
 him the most courteous apology, adding that 
 it was only on the preceding evening that he 
 had learnt the truth. It was worth hearing 
 Villiers, with his tragic gestures, and the per- 
 petual wagging of his front fair lock, retail 
 the incidents of this coup de theatre. " Sir ! " 
 he would cry, " my sword dropped from my 
 hand, when I heard this pale young man, with 
 his brave and resigned face, tell me, with an 
 evident effort, that, French officer as he was, 
 he would rather pass for a coward than fight 
 in support of a lie. I opened my arms. I 
 folded him to my heart. I told him he was
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 107 
 
 worthy to be allied with the illustrious dead 
 whose representative I was ; and in my 
 father's name and my own, I authorized, nay, 
 I besought him to continue to bear the name 
 of Villiers de 1'Isle Adam!" 
 
 But everything, even lawsuits, must come 
 to an end ; and one fine morning the judges 
 gave their decision in the extraordinary 
 case of " L'Isle Adam versus Simon, alias 
 Lockroy, and Anicet Bourgeois." As my 
 reader will be prepared to learn, the tribunal 
 refused the poor poet's appeal, deeming it 
 inadmissible because, as the marshal was 
 historical property, every author had a right 
 to show him in whatever light suited him 
 best ; especially when he based his judgment, 
 as in the case of the writers of " Perrinet 
 Leclerc," on the evidence of contemporary 
 documents and memoirs, such as the Chronicle 
 of the Monk of St. Denis. But one conso- 
 lation Villiers had. The preamble of the 
 judgment established those direct ties of 
 descent which made him the last represen- 
 tative of that famous and heroic warrior who 
 was the friend of the great Duke of Burgundy.
 
 io8 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 When I learnt these events from the poet's 
 lips, they were already in the limbo of the 
 past. 
 
 Were I not possessed with an instinctive 
 and not altogether unreasonable horror of 
 foot-notes, I would inflict one on my readers, 
 a propos to this trial, to state that I have 
 related the whole of it from recollection a 
 recollection graven upon my memory by the 
 picturesque recitals of my gifted and much 
 regretted cousin. In thus summing up, with- 
 out actually vouching for the facts of the 
 story, I trust I have not trangressed in any 
 particular against the truth. But in any case 
 I shall be very glad to accept any verification 
 which may be kindly submitted to me. 
 
 I think further, that I shall do no preju- 
 dice to the memory of Villiers, if I frankly 
 confess that I entertain some serious doubt 
 concerning the alleged handsome retraction 
 made by his opponent on the scene of 
 the intended duel. The poet was in the 
 habit of dramatizing all the incidents of his 
 daily life into enchanting stories. Their 
 groundwork was generally true, but he
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 109 
 
 would arrange the scene, invent incidents, 
 and create personages, in obedience appa- 
 rently to his aesthetic instincl:, or perhaps 
 rather to his wild innate longing to mystify 
 his audience. In this particular case my 
 suspicion is supported by the following suc- 
 cincl: and nobly-expressed letter, addressed to 
 him by his adversary, and which, necessarily, 
 put an end to their difference. At all events 
 this document proves that our author was in 
 the right. 
 
 " Paris, 
 
 "February i6t/i, 1877. 
 
 "SIR, 
 
 " I can only bow before the incontest- 
 ably authentic title-deeds which you have 
 been so good as to communicate to me, and 
 which indeed establish unanswerably your 
 descent from that family of Villiers de 1'Isle 
 Adam whose name is written in such glorious 
 characters upon the pages of our history, and 
 in whose ranks figures the Marshal Jean, 
 whose memory, in spite of what anyone may 
 say, remains above all suspicion. 
 
 " This does not, however, alter the fa6l that
 
 no VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 a royal ordinance, dated September 7, 1815, 
 and inserted in the ' Bulletin des Lois,' autho- 
 rizes my grandfather, Vicomte Joseph-Gabriel, 
 son of Francois- 1 gnace de Villiers des Champs, 
 and of Dame Deshere le Borgue de Villement, 
 his wife, to add to his name of Villiers that of 
 De 1'Isle Adam. 
 
 " There appears to me to be no objecl: to 
 be gained by going into the genealogy of my 
 family, which has given knights and com- 
 manders to the Order of St. Louis and 
 marshals to France, which is allied to the 
 Rohans, etc., etc. 
 
 " And, in conclusion, if, contrary to my 
 expectations, the explanations contained in 
 this letter do not appear to you to suffice, 
 pray be assured that I hold myself entirely 
 at your disposal. 
 
 (Signed] "G. VILLIERS DE L'!SLE ADAM." 
 
 While I am about quoting the documents 
 bearing on this curious business, the reader 
 may be glad that I should conclude by giving 
 the principal passages of the fine letter written 
 by Villiers to the newspapers of the day, in
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. in 
 
 answer to the mean and spiteful attacks of 
 which he was then the object. 
 
 "Paris (undated, probably January, 1877). 
 " To the Editor of 
 
 " SIR, 
 
 " This is my answer to the article you 
 have published concerning me. I desire that 
 it may suffice for all those of your colleagues 
 of the press, who have been good enough to 
 devote their precious time to me, and busy 
 themselves with my name, during the past 
 week. 
 
 " It has been claimed that my sole object 
 in bringing an action against the proprietors 
 of the play ' Perrinet Leclerc,' was to establish 
 the genealogical succession of my own family. 
 Now I may remark that for eight-and-thirty 
 years I committed the grave indiscretion of 
 never giving that question a thought, believ- 
 ing it (with others whose duty calls them to 
 consider it) so clearly established that I could 
 afford to smile at any discussion of the sub- 
 ject. I may further remark that it was only
 
 ii2 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 the request of counsel on the other side 
 which obliged me to produce any such proofs 
 at all. It seems strange, then, that this re- 
 proach should be made to me by the very 
 adversaries who attacked me on this point at 
 the moment when I myself was about to 
 desist from the struggle. 
 
 " It has been asserted that there is a gap in 
 the sequence of my family genealogy. Now 
 genealogy is an exacl: science, which no more 
 admits of a mistake than does algebra. In it 
 ' five centuries ' mean nothing. They should 
 have been described as ' twelve generations.' 
 
 " The records of the Order of Malta, in 
 which the whole nobility of France and of 
 Europe are concerned, are indisputable evi- 
 dence all over the world, and that Order would 
 not give a careless decision concerning the 
 descendants of a Grand Master such as the 
 one whose name I bear. 
 
 "That a clerk should write a 3 instead of a 
 9 on the hasty copy of a title of the order, 
 and that (in spite of the opportunities given 
 by me during two years for free and open 
 investigation) such an error should be quoted
 
 VILLIERS DE D'ISLE ADAM. 113 
 
 against the absolute authoritativeness of my 
 title-deeds, is, I repeat, merely a matter cal- 
 culated to raise a smile. In any case, I shall 
 bring the fa6ls before the French Record 
 Office. 
 
 " I descend from Jean de 1'Isle Adam as 
 directly as any of you gentlemen descends 
 from his own father ; and, in spite of the 
 ' Chronique de St. Denis,' I have some reason 
 to be proud of the fa6l. 
 
 " I am asked what interest I had in vexing 
 my soul concerning a play which outrages his 
 pure and sacred memory ; and it is affirmed 
 that I simply desired to puff myself by doing 
 so. A man is but that which his own thoughts 
 make him. And for my only answer, I 
 would beg those who have had this thought 
 concerning me, to guard it preciously. They 
 are quite worthy of it, and I shall never care 
 to claim either their sympathy or esteem. . . . 
 
 " There is as much truth in this assertion 
 as in that which claims to have discovered a 
 gap in the direcl: succession of my family 
 about the year 1535. It is a wonderful thing 
 to note how lightheartedly a lawyer will cast 
 
 i
 
 H4 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 doubt on the records of the Order of Malta, 
 which are an article of faith to the nobility of 
 the whole world ; on the signed attestations 
 whereby provincial bishops have recognized 
 three centuries of publicly-admitted family 
 rights ; on the signatures of ambassadors and 
 consuls, both French and English ; and on 
 that of the Minister of Justice himself! 
 
 " I have no right to submit myself to any 
 legal investigation on this head. An inves- 
 tigation of what ? Of my claims to be of 
 noble descent ? But the only course left to 
 the law courts themselves must be to bow to 
 those claims, which are established by the 
 only tribunal to which I can in honour appeal. 
 One alone, among the signatures with which 
 these parchments swarm, suffices to prove 
 my contention. The text of the ' Declaration 
 of the Order of Malta ' runs as follows : 
 ' Notum facimus et in verbo veritatis attes- 
 tamur ut in judicio pleno ac indubia fides 
 adhibeatur. . . . 
 
 " ' We declare under our seal and that of the 
 Papal Bull published this day, that Armand 
 de I'lsle Adam, admitted a knight of this
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 115 
 
 Order, has proved his quarterings in the 
 most indisputable manner. 
 
 "'We, Caumartin, Intendant de Cham- 
 pagne, bear witness to the correctness of the 
 genealogy of, etc., etc., etc. 
 
 " 'We, Bishop of St. Brieuc, ourselves con- 
 nected through the family of De Verdalle 
 with the Knights of Malta, bear witness 
 that for the last three hundred years it has 
 been matter of public notoriety that, etc., 
 etc., etc.' 
 
 " How can you expect any law court to 
 pronounce for or against, in such a matter ? 
 How can any newspaper chatter affect it? 
 Centuries have rolled by. You come in too 
 late. These are accomplished facts ! "
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Le Pin Galant, near Bordeaux Arrival of Villiers 
 with his play" The New World "The American 
 centenary competition The character of Mistress 
 Andrews The legend of Ralph Evandale. 
 
 HILE Villiers was thus struggling 
 with the gentlemen of the wig and 
 gown in the Paris law courts, I 
 followed his movements from afar 
 with considerable anxiety. In my retirement 
 in one of those pretty one-storied houses 
 near Bordeaux which the people in the south 
 poetically term a " Chartreuse," I trembled as 
 I tore asunder the wrapper of my Paris paper 
 every morning, lest I should learn that Vil- 
 liers, whose fearfully over-excited condition 
 was well known to me, had given way to 
 some eccentricity or some dangerous act of 
 violence. I kept on writing to beseech him
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 117 
 
 to leave Paris, and to come and share my 
 solitude, redolent of the healthy odour of 
 the pine forests, enlivened by the impetuous 
 rush of the great river dotted with white and 
 fluttering sails, and ideal with its spreading 
 horizons bathed in the purple and gold of the 
 exquisite southern sunsets. 
 
 But, alas ! he wrapped himself in dis- 
 heartening silence, and his shadow fell not 
 on the snow-white steps which led to the 
 Pin Galant, as my temporary dwelling was 
 called. 
 
 One day, however, the " Figaro " brought 
 me news of his speedy arrival, in the form of 
 a letter published on its first page, and bear- 
 ing his signature. I have not this document 
 before me, but I know that in it he refuted, 
 in his usual sarcastic style, some fresh per- 
 fidious insinuation concerning the imperfect 
 authenticity of the name he bore. The 
 last sentence of the letter, however, which 
 gave me a lively thrill of joy, is for ever 
 graven on my memory. I quote it, as being 
 exceedingly characteristic. " I am on the 
 point of starting for Pin Galant, not far
 
 n8 VILLIERS DE LISLE ADAM. 
 
 from the Spanish frontier. Lovers of another 
 style of conversation, more silent than that of 
 human tongues, are requested to note this 
 fact." 
 
 He duly appeared a few days later, without 
 having otherwise announced himself. 
 
 It was on one of those torrid afternoons 
 known only to the inhabitants of the south, 
 that Villiers arrived on foot from the neigh- 
 bouring village, whither the omnibus from 
 Bordeaux had brought him. He was simply 
 dressed, in black kerseymere trousers, a loose 
 grey overcoat trimmed with fur ( ! ), and a 
 well-worn but shiny chimneypot hat. In his 
 hand he victoriously flourished a huge walk- 
 ing-stick. The big pockets of his unseason- 
 ably thick overcoat bulged in a manner which 
 alarmed me for their solidity. At first I 
 thought he was using them as a carpet-bag, 
 for he brought no sign of any other luggage 
 with him. But my mistake only lasted a few 
 minutes. Hardly had he entered, when, 
 after the first cordial greetings, he pulled out 
 of his vast pockets five thick manuscript 
 pamphlets, piling them one upon the other,
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 119 
 
 and his white, prelatical hand waving with 
 the air of a bishop a sort of benedictory 
 gesture, he exclaimed, " Like Columbus at 
 the feet of his Spanish sovereign, even so lay 
 I the 'New World' at the feet of your 
 majesty and my good cousin ! " The books 
 contained, in good truth, the manuscript of 
 his magnificent drama in five acts, entitled 
 " Le Nouveau Monde," which had gained 
 the first place, the year before, in the com- 
 petition instituted in honour of the United 
 States, but which had not yet found an 
 opening on the Parisian stage. 
 
 Before relating the adventures of Villiers 
 and his manuscript at Bordeaux, I think it 
 will be of interest to scholars if I give some 
 explanation of the origin of this dramatic 
 work, which, in spite of its admirable qualities, 
 is almost unknown at this present time. In 
 1880 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam found a pub- 
 lisher bold enough to issue it at his own risk, 
 and his name deserves to be recorded. It 
 was M. Richard, printer and publisher, of 
 the Passage de 1'Opera. The pamphlet is 
 now almost out of print. Villiers had pre-
 
 120 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 ceded his play by an "Address to the 
 Reader," to which I shall return later, in 
 its proper time and place, and by a very 
 short preface, which I quote in its entirety, 
 because it explains far better than I could 
 the peculiar circumstances which gave birth 
 to the work. 
 
 "In 1875 a dramatic competition was an- 
 nounced by the theatrical press of Paris. A 
 medal of honour, even a sum of 10,000 francs, 
 and other temptations, were offered to the 
 French dramatic author who should most 
 powerfully recall, in a work of four or five a6ls, 
 the episode of the proclamation of the inde- 
 pendence of the United States, the hundredth 
 anniversary of which fell on July 4th, 1876. 
 
 "The two examining juries were thus com- 
 posed. The first, of the principal critics of 
 the French theatrical press. The second, of 
 M. Victor Hugo, honorary president, Messrs. 
 Emile Augier, Octave Feuillet, and Ernest 
 Legouve, members of the French Academy, 
 Mr. Grenville Murray, representing the " New 
 York Herald," and M. Perrin, administrator- 
 general of the Theatre Fra^ais.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 121 
 
 " The preliminary jury were to select five 
 manuscripts; the final jury, to class these 
 manuscripts in what may be called their in- 
 tellectual order. 
 
 " Six months were allowed for writing the 
 works, and about a hundred plays, signed 
 with mottoes only, were forwarded to the in- 
 ternational agency of M. Theodore Michaelis, 
 the inaugurator of the competition. 
 
 " More than a year elapsed while the gentle- 
 men of the theatrical press were examining 
 the dramas. 
 
 " The titles of the selected works were pub- 
 lished, and among them appeared that of 
 the ' Nouveau Monde.' 
 
 " Two more months passed by. At last, 
 on the 22nd of January, 1876, an official 
 notice signed by the superior jury informed 
 me that the ' Nouveau Monde,' had of all 
 the competing works, passed with most 
 honour through the double ordeal." 
 
 The attractions of the programme had 
 been well arranged to tempt any dramatic 
 author. Yet it was not the medal of honour, 
 nor even the dream of the ten thousand
 
 122 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 francs, which induced the creator of Bonhomet 
 to compete. It was the proposed subject ; 
 above all, the conditions imposed for its treat- 
 ment. From the theatrical point of view, 
 Villiers had always dreamt of being an inno- 
 vator in historical drama. His idea was that 
 the characteristics of the nation, or the event 
 which was to be portrayed, should be im- 
 ported into the framework of some personal 
 intrigue, in which each individual of the 
 dramatis personce should personify in his lan- 
 guage, attitude, or actions, some one of the 
 numerous elements produced by the friction 
 of the incidents of the story. And in the 
 very terms of the programme by which the 
 competitors were bound, he found the oppor- 
 tunity for realizing this conception. For the 
 rules of the competition dictated, amongst 
 other obligations, that the work must be 
 written with special reference to July 4th, 
 1776; at the same time requiring a dramc 
 intime, in which the event of the 4th July 
 was only to be superadded to the story. 
 
 In the author's mind, then, " Le Nouveau 
 Monde" is, before all else, a symbolic drama,
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 123 
 
 and each of its personages admirably repre- 
 sents the idea, the principle, the nation, of 
 which he or she is the mouthpiece. Thus, in 
 Lord Raleigh Cecil the author has incarnated 
 the principle of royalism, as in Stephen 
 Ashwell he has typified the principle of 
 liberty. "In my play," writes Villiers in his 
 preface, " Lord Cecil, under a veil of almost 
 totally imaginary circumstances, replaces and 
 sums up Lord Percy, General Howe, and 
 many others. He is, as it were, the golden 
 sovereign, stamped with the effigy of the 
 King of England." 
 
 It is hardly my place, in these personal 
 recollections, to endeavour to heighten the 
 merits of this work of Villiers. But I may 
 be permitted to lay stress on some details of 
 an original production, so little known to the 
 literary public, and yet so worthy of its atten- 
 tion. To those of us who are not yet emas- 
 culated by the terrible invasion of common- 
 place ideas, " Le Nouveau Monde" remains 
 one of the best constructed, deepest, and most 
 passionate dramas of the present day. It 
 has had the great honour of being sneered at
 
 124 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 by M. Francisque Sarcey, who has besprinkled 
 the chara6ler of Mistress Andrews with the 
 salt of his Attic wit. To some superficial 
 minds this character may seem impressed 
 with romantic exaggeration. Yet it has been 
 learnedly imagined and laboriously premedi- 
 tated by a writer who was neither a novice 
 nor a simpleton in literature. Villiers fore- 
 saw that it would be exposed to the cheap 
 jests of those self-important gentry, the 
 critics of the weekly papers. In his "Address 
 to the Reader " he has taken pains to explain 
 his conception, and this page of his, full of 
 an intense personality, so wonderfully and 
 rhythmically written, cannot fail to charm 
 my readers. It seems to me it must 
 make every true artist desire to read that 
 " Nouveau Monde " so lately cut up by the 
 feuilletonists. Here it is : 
 
 " Mistress Andrews is the sombre reflection 
 of that feudalism of which Lord Cecil repre- 
 sents the brighter side, and I find myself 
 obliged to say a few words in explanation of 
 the almost fantastic character with which she 
 is endued. This woman's personality is
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 125 
 
 formed by the cohesion of intellectual and 
 sensitive elements of far too high an order to 
 be strictly human. Some peculiarities of the 
 character seem to be ultra-feminine. There- 
 fore, in order to legitimatize them in her 
 case, I have had to surround her with a 
 legendary halo, to make her a sort of 
 American Melusina. It has appeared to me 
 to be logically indispensable to the vitality, 
 even the possibility, of the character, to 
 endow her with a mysterious mark, actually 
 imprinted in her flesh, a gory impress which 
 shall appear only at the hour of death, 
 a sign, in fact, the heritage of the curse of 
 centuries, with the extraordinary horror of 
 which popular tradition surrounds her name. 
 I have desired thus to create the type of a 
 strange, stormy, embittered soul the daughter 
 of a race haunted by melancholy, by silence, 
 and by fate. A thousand shattered splen- 
 dours appear athwart this gloomy character, 
 even as mirrors and goblets would shiver, 
 and daggers flash, against the arras of an 
 ancient palace wherein some ducal orgy had 
 been held. This having been said, some excla-
 
 126 VILLIERS DE LISLE ADAM. 
 
 mations in the part, antiquated ones, perhaps, 
 explain and make themselves acceptable, 
 pronounced as they are by a being of so 
 peculiar a nature." 
 
 But what was that " mysterious mark 
 actually impressed upon this woman's flesh," 
 this gory print which was only to appear 
 at the death hour ? What " the legendary 
 halo" which surrounds the terrible Mistress 
 Andrews ? An old woman, Mistress Noella, 
 describes it by the light of a camp-fire, in 
 the midst of the virgin forest of the New 
 World. The splendidly-related legend, which 
 was almost entirely suppressed in the shape- 
 less performance of this fine play at the 
 Theatre des Nations, must be inserted here, 
 for several good reasons : first, for the sake 
 of the curious, for it is as good as unpub- 
 lished ; further, it is an admirable prose- 
 poem, whose place is marked in the antho- 
 logies of the future; and finally, it is a 
 wonderful example of the peculiar genius of 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam. 
 
 The few friends who have heard him recite 
 it, pale, trembling, and haggard, under the
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 127 
 
 light of the midnight lamp terrifying, and 
 terrified himself by his own story will recall 
 as they read these lines the tragic and 
 infectious dread which he threw into his 
 declamation. 
 
 " One evening the knight Ralph Evandale, 
 returning to his castle from the Wars of the 
 Roses, heard on the mountain the sound of 
 singing in his ancestral halls. In coat of 
 mail and with lowered vizor he climbed the 
 stone staircase, marvelling at the festive 
 sounds. A thousand lamps shone on the 
 guests. His father, Fungh Evandale, was 
 celebrating his second marriage, and the 
 neighbouring barons, sitting round him, 
 pledged each other in friendly healths. From 
 the threshold Ralph beheld the newly-wedded 
 wife, white as her coronet of pearls ; and in 
 the bride he recognized the pale girl whom 
 he had long loved in his secret soul. A hell- 
 born feeling rose in his heart. Silently he 
 closed the door, and disappeared. Mean- 
 while the songs had ceased. Leaning thought- 
 fully on her elbow, on the nuptial couch, the 
 young chatelaine watched her lord. The noble
 
 128 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 thane unbuckled his sword before the great 
 hanging mirror, when suddenly the tapestry 
 was pushed back by a gauntletted hand. It 
 was Ralph this time, with vizor raised. 
 Fungh turned, and, recognizing him, joyfully 
 stretched out his arms. But the cruel son, 
 impelled by some foul demon, started for- 
 ward, fell traitorously on his father, and 
 plunged his dagger in his throat, up to the 
 cross-hilt Fungh, stricken to death, in- 
 stinctively put his hand on the wound ; then, 
 with a maledictory gesture, he laid his gory 
 fingers on the face of the unnatural son who 
 gazed unmoved upon his agony. Ralph drew 
 himself up, his heart sullied by his crime, 
 and his face branded with his father s blood. 
 Then, bruising in his mailed hands the two 
 wrists of the widowed bride, he dragged 
 her, half-naked, dishevelled, her knees shaking 
 with terror, into the adjacent oratory, and 
 would have constrained the chaplain of the 
 old manor to bless, in that very hour, their 
 sacrilegious union. Terrified though he 
 was, the priest gathered courage before the 
 altar, and would only utter a well-deserved
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 129 
 
 anathema. Thus was the guilty marriage 
 solemnized. And the shadow fell upon their 
 race ! They gave life to a posterity of 
 demons, an accursed line of wicked men, 
 who have rendered themselves illustrious on 
 the earth by their crimes and their gloomy 
 amours. Now the race is extinct. One girl 
 only survives, and she destroyed her property 
 and burnt her dwelling before she fled her 
 country. Where is she ? Nobody can tell ! 
 Nevertheless, she will be recognized in her 
 last hour, for, since the terrible night when 
 their young ancestress beheld the bloody 
 hand on the face of the parricide, that accusing 
 hand-print, graven on the flesh of the Evan- 
 dales, has perpetuated itself from generation 
 to generation. They are conceived with that 
 impress ! It is the law of their birth ! And 
 whenever death strikes one of them, the 
 sinister hand appears upon the brow of the 
 unhappy being, a ghostly, shining hand, 
 which the everlasting night alone can efface ! 
 Pray then for Edith Evandale, the last of 
 her race, unknown, forgotten ! " 
 
 This Edith Evandale, it will have been 
 K
 
 130 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 understood, is she who now conceals herself 
 under the name of Mistress Andrews. As 
 the old woman concludes her story, and 
 while all are still bending forward in silent 
 and breathless attention, the unhappy woman 
 herself appears standing among them, the 
 moonlight falling on her alone. " Yes," she 
 says in a low despairing voice, " pray ! "
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Villiers' rage against the members of the jury Dramatic 
 scene at the house of Victor Hugo Villiers leaves 
 Paris The Bordeaux theatres Godefrin, director 
 of the Theatre Francais An extraordinary reading 
 Little Mdlle. Aimee Madame Aime"e Tessandier. 
 
 Y quotations have carried me away, 
 and we are far from Bordeaux ! 
 To return. When Villiers arrived, 
 he was more furious than ever 
 with Paris and the Parisians in general, and 
 with literary committees and theatrical mana- 
 gers in particular. This time it was no 
 longer " Perrinet Leclerc," nor the loss of his 
 lawsuit, which excited his rage, but the suc- 
 cession of injustices of which the " Nouveau 
 Monde " and its author had been the victims. 
 He had, indeed, received the official notice, 
 signed by the superior jury, and announcing
 
 132 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 that his drama had taken the highest and 
 most honourable place in passing through the 
 twofold ordeal. It had received the praises 
 of Victor Hugo, of Emile Augier and Octave 
 Feuillet, of Ernest Legouve even ! and that 
 was all. No medal of honour, much less the 
 ten thousand francs ! He was, it is true, too 
 well acquainted with the side-scenes of life at 
 this end of the century to feel much surprised 
 at seeing the gold turn into dead leaves, but 
 he had hoped that those who had instituted the 
 competition would, at all events, have made 
 some effort to have the play of their choice 
 performed on some great Parisian stage. 
 Nothing of the kind. A flood of benignant 
 commonplace was the only answer to his in- 
 quiries and his imperious demands, and the 
 gifted author of the "Nouveau Monde" had to 
 undergo the humiliation (surely, in another 
 life, it shall be reckoned in his favour !) of see- 
 ing the second-rate play of one of his fellow- 
 competitors, M. Armand d'Artois, performed 
 on the Paris boards, while his own slumbered 
 in the manuscript boxes of the manager of 
 the Porte St. Martin Theatre.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 133 
 
 It would have been too much even for a 
 being gifted with more patience than my poor 
 Villiers possessed. 
 
 As a first step the poet went and made a 
 scandal at the Olympian abode of Victor 
 Hugo, in the Avenue de Clichy. In the 
 presence of the usual body-guard, Vacquerie, 
 Lockroy, Catulle Mendes, and my late vene- 
 rable compatriot, L , he dared to accuse 
 
 the honorary president of the superior jury of 
 having been the first to break all the promises 
 signed with his august name. He mentioned 
 the demigod's age to him, and made some allu- 
 sion to literary integrity in general. L , 
 
 who usually sat silent in these gatherings, 
 never opening his mouth except to cry 
 " Sabaoth ! " unable to contain his fury, 
 angrily advanced towards the intruder, and 
 indignantly shaking the beautiful white curls 
 which framed his pallid face, he shot at the 
 blasphemer this eloquent apostrophe, which 
 Homer or Henri Monnier might have been 
 glad to take a note of : " Integrity, sir, is not 
 a question of age ! " Slowly, with his un- 
 certain glance, Villiers scanned the worthy
 
 134 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 elder from head to foot, then gently answered, 
 " No, sir, nor folly either ! " Then, leaving 
 the startled coterie, horrified at his unlimited 
 audacity, he hurried to the Porte St. Martin, 
 snatched his manuscript from the secretary's 
 claws, and at dawn next day, laden with the 
 five thick copybooks containing his five a6ls, 
 and without vulgar care for such a trivial 
 thing as luggage, he took the through train to 
 Bordeaux. 
 
 " Then at once," he said, as he brought the 
 story of the adventures of his play to a close, 
 " I bethought me of you, of the provinces, of 
 vengeance. I dreamt of murder, of decentra- 
 lization ! Don't you see what a splendid 
 chance there is here for the manager of 
 some provincial theatre, to be first to accept 
 and mount and play a piece by the Comte 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, which has been 
 crowned by the approbation of a committee 
 counting among its members those idols of 
 middle-class lovers of literature, Legouve, 
 Feuillet, Augier, and Hugo ? But, in the first 
 place, is there a theatre in Bordeaux ? " 
 " There are three," I replied, "without count-
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 135 
 
 ing the strollers' booths." Bordeaux did, in 
 fa6l, possess in those days three important 
 theatres : the Grand Theatre, which was de- 
 voted to operatic performances, the Theatre 
 Louit, which had no particular line, and the 
 Theatre Frangais, which was entirely given 
 up to comedy and drama. The then manager 
 of the latter was a Parisian artiste, a good 
 actor, and an excellent administrator, pos- 
 sessed of great boldness, much insight, and 
 most reliable good taste. He has since made 
 himself a name at the Cafe de Suede, and in 
 the theatrical world, as a most successful 
 organizer of provincial and dramatic tours. 
 He was then, and presumably is still, called 
 Godefrin. We had had some casual relations 
 with each other, and as soon as Villiers im- 
 parted his new project to me, I bethought me 
 of the director of the Theatre Frangais of Bor- 
 deaux. I wrote to him, therefore, making 
 known our idea and asking for an early inter- 
 view. We had not long to wait. The answer 
 came, overflowing with enthusiasm for Villiers 
 and full of gratitude to myself, and the very 
 next evening found us sitting in the managerial
 
 136 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 apartment. Villiers had been to the barber ; 
 his well-curled moustache had a conquering 
 air, and he marched victoriously through the 
 streets of Bordeaux with his manuscript under 
 his arm. But, as the sequel will show, this 
 pretence of assurance concealed a horrible 
 state of nervousness; he was, in reality, as 
 agitated as a debutante who hears the call- 
 boy's bell for the first time. And yet there 
 was nothing inaccessible in the demeanour of 
 the impresario ! He was still young, free 
 from any professional swagger, and very 
 affable. He received Villiers with admiring 
 deference. A young woman, tall and slight 
 and pale, dressed in dark colours, rose to her 
 feet on our entrance, and surveyed Villiers 
 with curiously brilliant eyes. "Allow me to 
 introduce you to little Mdlle. Aimee, my best 
 pensionnaire" said Godefrin ; " she is con- 
 sumed with a desire to play a tragic part, and 
 I believe she will succeed ; ay, and brilliantly ! 
 Perhaps, dear sir," turning to Villiers, " you 
 will be able to find her a part in your play ? " 
 There was no answer from Villiers. All out 
 of curl already, he had retired into a corner,
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 137 
 
 whence he watched us with his suspicious, de- 
 jected, startled gaze, nervously rolling a ciga- 
 rette between his fingers. 
 
 "Well, let us begin to read ! " said I at last, 
 to break a silence which was becoming em- 
 barrassing. We seated ourselves ; the poet at 
 the table, we at random on the seats scattered 
 about the room. And the reading began. 
 
 I have witnessed many strange scenes in 
 the course of my life, but never, I think, was 
 I present at anything so fantastically, irresis- 
 tibly funny as that sight of Villiers de 1'Isle 
 Adam reading the sheets of his drama to 
 Godefrin the manager. At the beginning 
 things went fairly well. Villiers seated him- 
 self, coughed, moistened his lips in the glass 
 of water before him, tossed back, with his 
 usual gesture, the long fair lock which, in spite 
 of its recent curling, would keep falling over 
 his eyes, and then, with a searching glance all 
 round, he opened the manuscript and began : 
 
 " Act the first tableau the first Swinmore 
 the great saloon of Swinmore manor-house, 
 near Auckland, in the county of Cumberland. 
 At the rear "
 
 138 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 Here he interrupted himself, rose from his 
 chair, and, with the obje<5l of explaining the 
 fittings of the scene to Godefrin, began to 
 jump about the room, knocking over seats, 
 dragging armchairs about, unhooking the 
 arms on a small trophy which hung upon 
 the wall, and accompanying his erratic be- 
 haviour with inconsequent sentences and 
 incomprehensible words : 
 
 " The balcony of wrought iron-work 
 night a moon stars there, in the distance, 
 thy silver streak, O sea! gold enrichments 
 Ha ! ha ! ha ! they come, the voices ! the 
 distant and prophetic voices ! the departing 
 voices ! Ahoy ! ahoy ! from the boat here 
 is Ruth, the sad lady of the castle here is 
 the smiling Mary ! the voices again the 
 voices approach ! the voices die away ! ! ! 
 
 Suddenly he perceived the piano, threw 
 himself upon the keyboard, and striking some 
 melancholy chords, he sang in a plaintive 
 voice, "Adieu, prairie! Adieu, berceau! Adieu, 
 tombeau! Adieu, pair ie !" then, still accom- 
 panying himself, recited in sepulchral accents, 
 " Farewell, old house ! in which I have never
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 139 
 
 given happiness, nor enjoyed it ! the duty for 
 which I forsake thee is the most sacred of all 
 duties in my eyes ! God shall be my judge 
 yes ! Adieu, tombeau ! " 
 
 Startled and terror-stricken, the correct 
 frock-coated manager, pale and with com- 
 pressed lips, had taken refuge in a corner, 
 whence his wild southern eyes every now and 
 then shot imploring glances at me. The 
 actress had buried her head in her hands, 
 and I could see her pretty shoulders shaking 
 in a tempest of convulsive laughter. Mean- 
 while, Villiers, with bristling locks and dis- 
 trustful eyes, had left the piano, and, standing 
 with folded arms before Godefrin, he de- 
 manded, "Well, sir, have you understood 
 this mysterious symbolism ? Everything, 
 everything is in that : the parting from the 
 old country, the uprooting of the young tree 
 which is to bear the foliage, the fruit, the 
 perfume of the corrupt Old World in a 
 newer and purer one. That, the exposition 
 of the idea of my play, is clearly established, 
 is it not ? " In spite of his astonishment, poor 
 Godefrin found breath to answer, " Doubtless,
 
 140 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 dear sir, your idea is wonderful, but I must 
 humbly admit it has not evolved itself to my 
 intelligence from what I have heard. May I 
 beg of you to read me your piece quietly, 
 without thinking about the scenery, action, or 
 symbolism ? " 
 
 Villiers shrugged his shoulders, his whole 
 physiognomy expressing ineffable scorn and 
 disdain. He turned to me : " Are you com- 
 ing ? " he said ; then taking up his hat and 
 cane, and his manuscript " Madam ! sir ! I 
 wish you good morning ! " and he moved 
 towards the door. 
 
 We surrounded him. I dragged him back, 
 and made him sit down and listen to me. 
 "Are you stark mad ? " I cried, sternly; " and 
 do you suppose the manager of a theatre is a 
 prophet, who can penetrate the mysteries of a 
 poet's brain, and discover what his ideas are 
 before he condescends to put them into good, 
 plain, intelligible prose ? Deuce take it ! It 
 is not by pushing about chairs, upsetting 
 furniture, and bawling to the piano, that you 
 will manage to make Godefrin understand 
 your play. Take my advice ; give me your
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 141 
 
 manuscript " (and I took it out of his hand) ; 
 " go and sit down in that farthest corner, and 
 let me give a complete, ordinary, common- 
 place reading of your piece." 
 
 As I spoke his face darkened ; he retired 
 into a recess, and rolling his eternal cigarette, 
 his eyes on the ground, he answered in that 
 hollow voice which he always used when he 
 desired to personify Doctor Triboulat Bon- 
 homet, " Very good ! a family reading ! So 
 be it ! " " Bravo ! " cried Godefrin, " now we 
 shall be able to understand what we are about, 
 and admire in proportion." But I must draw 
 my story to a close. For two hours I read 
 without stopping, except to rest for a few 
 minutes between the a6ls. If I raised my 
 eyes, I saw Godefrin listening with an air of 
 authority, and Villiers lost in distant dreams, 
 while little Mdlle. Aimee's keen, ardent, con- 
 centrated gaze was rivetted on myself. I felt 
 and understood that she drank in every word 
 I pronounced, and that every character, as it 
 shaped itself before her mental vision, became 
 instinct with life, movement, and suffering ; 
 and when I reached the foot of the last page,
 
 142 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 it was her that my eyes instinctively sought. 
 She had risen, quivering with excitement, and 
 hastening to Villiers, she seized both his hands, 
 exclaiming, " Oh, sir, dear sir, I beg you to 
 let me play the part of Mistress Andrews ! " 
 " It is an admirable play," said the impresario, 
 on his side, "and I am ready to make any 
 sacrifice in order to mount such a fine piece 
 of work in a way worthy of its own and its 
 author's merits." 
 
 Alas, poor Godefrin ! He little knew the 
 poetic temperament, more capricious than 
 April sunshine, more changeable than the 
 sea. The " Nouveau Monde" was never to be 
 played at Bordeaux. A few months after the 
 scene I have just described, Villiers de 1'Isle 
 Adam was back in Paris, and, seduced by the 
 fair promises of Chabrillat, at that time re- 
 organizing the Ambigu, he withdrew his piece 
 from the director of the Bordeaux theatre, 
 to confide it to this suddenly-arisen literary 
 Barnum. It is greatly to be regretted that 
 Bordeaux should not have had the first per- 
 formance of this fine play. I am convinced 
 that Villiers' work would there have achieved
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 143 
 
 the enthusiastic success which it merits, and 
 everyone will agree with me that no Parisian 
 stage could have furnished an artist more 
 capable of interpreting the gloomy role of the 
 heroine than little Mdlle. Aimee, M. Godefrin's 
 pensionnaire ; for Madame Aimee Tessandier, 
 of the Comedie Fran^aise, is now, and 
 justly, considered one of our finest and most 
 gifted tragic actresses, and Godefrin was a 
 true prophet when he predicted that her 
 success would be great. 
 
 Little Mdlle. Aimee of those bygone days ! 
 If chance should bring these lines before your 
 eyes, you may perhaps forget for a moment 
 your recent glories in the house of Moliere, 
 and give a thought to the distant past ! That 
 part of Mistress Andrews, madame, was a very 
 beautiful creation, and one which might well . 
 inspire such an artistic individuality as yours. 
 It might have marked an important stage in 
 your triumphal march ; it might, even now, 
 did you choose to take it back and play it to 
 the life, become the fairest pearl in your 
 diadem as a tragic actress !
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Restful days The real Villiers Villiers and the fair 
 sex Talks about bygone days Charles Baude- 
 laire His true nature His strange home-life 
 Jeanne Duval Edgar Poe Richard Wagner 
 "Axel" The Cabala and the occult sciences 
 Villiers' religious sentiments Quotations " L'Eve 
 Future." 
 
 HOSE days spent with my friend 
 far from the cares and noise of city 
 life, have remained with me as one 
 of my pleasantest memories. For 
 us they were days of delicious and beneficial 
 repose. In that quiet sunny southern spot 
 where we spent some weeks together, the 
 mantle of bitter scorn and scepticism in which 
 he wrapped himself on the boulevards seemed 
 to drop from his shoulders. I penetrated far 
 into his inner nature, and he allowed me to
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 145 
 
 perceive the ideal and beautiful personality 
 which he so jealously concealed in the depths 
 of his soul. Thus I came to know at last a 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam but little resembling 
 the one who used to delight the nightly 
 frequenters of the brasseries at Montmartre 
 by his wit, his strange imaginings, and his 
 disconnected manner of life. This was the real 
 man, the dreamer, the philosopher, the poet, 
 the true lover, incarnated in the superhuman 
 character of Axel, and concealed beneath the 
 cloak of irony in which all his work is en- 
 folded. 
 
 On those cloudless balmy nights at Bor- 
 deaux, as we wandered in close converse along 
 the banks of the great river, under the graceful 
 arches of the pine-trees, through which the 
 pale and mysterious moonbeams slanted, 
 while above us rose the hill-slopes covered 
 with the heavy purple and golden bunches of 
 the ripening grapes, he would go back over 
 his past life, and would recount to me and to 
 himself his intellectual and sentimental his- 
 tory. Did woman play a great part in the 
 poet's life ? I think so, though he had few 
 
 L
 
 146 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 adventures and fewer passionate attachments. 
 But, like that much misunderstood personage, 
 Don Juan, Villiers was continually seeking 
 that divine emotion which he never felt but 
 once, and that in his early youth, during the 
 short existence of that first and purest love of 
 which the green Breton fields were the cradle, 
 the setting, and the grave. If he chanced to 
 catch sight of one of those celestial faces 
 which make one believe that angels may 
 come down to earth, he would fall in love 
 with his own ideal. But as soon as he ap- 
 proached a woman more closely, his pitiless 
 spirit of analysis laid bare all the moral ugli- 
 nesses and littlenesses veiled by her physical 
 beauty. The angel disappeared, and brutal 
 reality clipped the wings of his dream. After 
 a disappointment of this sort, he would throw 
 himself with a sort of frenzy into the wildest 
 orgies of midnight debauchery. At such times 
 his sarcasms about love and women burnt like 
 a redhot iron, but beneath all his imprecations 
 one felt that there lay the despair of a man 
 who has held for one short moment the key of 
 Eden, and from whom it has been snatched
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 147 
 
 before he could open the sacred portal. 
 Happily his art, his love for it, and his 
 consciousness of his own genius, consoled 
 him for his many mortifications. 
 
 He loved, in these intimate and often 
 retrospective conversations, to go back over 
 the first happy years of his residence in Paris, 
 to his friendly relations with my father, and 
 above all to Charles Baudelaire, whose 
 memory haunted him like a ghost. They 
 had made acquaintance at the office of the 
 " Revue Fantaisiste," whither, from time to 
 time, the author of the " Fleurs du Mai " 
 would bring some of his original and ex- 
 quisitely-polished " Petits Poemes en Prose." 
 Baudelaire and Villiers had too much in 
 common not to be quickly drawn together. 
 From the date of their first meeting they 
 were frequently in each other's company, and 
 Villiers was one of the few friends who were 
 present at the poet's terrible death. For my 
 own part, while greatly admiring Baudelaire 
 as a poetical craftsman, I did not like his 
 character as an individual. From all I had 
 heard (for I never knew him personally), he
 
 148 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 seemed to me to be wanting in sincerity, and 
 to be eternally posing, not only before the 
 public, but before the little circle over which 
 he habitually presided. 
 
 Villiers would leap with rage if I expressed 
 this in his presence. He declared that I 
 swam in a sea of stupid prejudice ; that what 
 I took for affectation in Baudelaire was really 
 the essence of his extraordinary nature ; that 
 he could not be nor behave otherwise. And 
 he would try to explain this strange, terribly 
 complicated character to me, diabolical as it 
 was in some ways, exquisitely good in others. 
 Would that my impotent pen could reproduce 
 the fire, the eagerness, and the brilliancy of 
 Villiers' speeches in defence of his departed 
 friend! Baudelaire had condescended to ex- 
 plain and analyze himself, to lay bare his 
 heart, as he expressed it, before this privi- 
 ledged associate. " In his youth," said Vil- 
 liers, "he halted between two ambitions. To 
 be the greatest actor in the world, or else to 
 be the Pope." Although he had shouldered 
 a musket and worn the workman's blouse in 
 1848, he gave himself out as a Catholic and a
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 149 
 
 supporter of constituted authority. " A Catho- 
 lic possessed by a devil," Villiers would add, 
 " and a supporter of authority who admitted 
 none but his own, and that of his vices, which 
 he cherished as works of art, and of which he 
 was inordinately proud." Nothing could have 
 been more strikingly curious than the descrip- 
 tion given by the author of "Axel" of the 
 poet's home-life. He lived near Neuilly, in 
 an apartment with large high rooms, full of 
 oddly-shaped furniture, Chinese monsters, 
 Indian idols, fantastic and generally frightful 
 carvings of animals, the walls of which were 
 hung with dark and revolting pictures of the 
 Spanish School, mutilations, executions, and 
 torture scenes, painted by the horror-loving 
 Ribeira and his pupils. In the midst of this 
 nightmare scene Baudelaire moved slowly 
 about, cold, silent, and pale, himself half- 
 frightened, like one who walks through a 
 hideous dream. And as mistress of this 
 strange dwelling, there was a creature stranger 
 still a coloured girl, almost a negress, named 
 Jeanne Duval, always shivering, and wrapped 
 in gaudy silks, past her youth, thin, cringing,
 
 150 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 and without any charm but that of her glowing 
 eyes. Violent, bad-tempered, untruthful, un- 
 faithful, greedy, intemperate, and depraved, 
 she died a drunkard's death in the Maison 
 Dubois, idolized and petted to her last gasp 
 by Baudelaire, who loved her deeply, I sup- 
 pose for the sake of her many perversities. 
 
 It was to Charles Baudelaire that Villiers 
 owed one of his greatest artistic enjoyments, 
 his acquaintance with the works of Edgar Poe. 
 He was a very bad English scholar, and 
 without his friend's wonderful translations, 
 and his enthusiastic talk on the subject of the 
 great American story-teller, he would never, 
 probably, have made acquaintance with the 
 "Strange Tales," nor with that wonderful 
 poem, " The Raven," which he used to recite 
 in such a striking manner. And it was the 
 will of fate that he should owe yet more to 
 Baudelaire. It was in his house that he saw 
 for the first time the only human genius before 
 whom he ever completely and unreservedly 
 bowed down, Richard Wagner. This meeting, 
 the most important event, according to Villiers, 
 in his intellectual life, took place in the month of
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 151 
 
 May, 1 86 1 . The wizard of music had called to 
 thank Baudelaire for a fine, and, for those days, 
 very courageous study of himself and his work, 
 published in the " Revue Europeenne," and 
 entitled " Richard Wagner and Tannhauser." 
 This was the beginning of one of those beau- 
 tiful and noble artistic friendships of which, 
 alas ! so few examples exist, and the bond of 
 which was only to be severed by death. In a 
 future chapter of these recollections, I shall 
 speak more fully, as is fitting, of the intimacy 
 between these two highly-gifted beings, so well 
 formed for mutual understanding, the creator 
 of Elsa and the creator of Axel. 
 
 Already, at the time of his sojourn in the 
 south of France, Villiers was at work on that 
 great philosophical drama of " Axel," which 
 only appeared after he was dead. 
 
 One of the most wonderful scenes in the 
 work (Part II., " Le Monde Tragique," scene 
 8), was entirely written at Bordeaux. 
 
 For the purposes of this play Villiers had 
 profoundly studied the Cabala and the occult 
 sciences, both past and present. Yet his 
 mind was too powerful and too analytical to
 
 152 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 be profoundly smitten by such theories. He 
 merely saw in them a phase of the philoso- 
 phical evolution of centuries, and he also found 
 in them dramatic elements of the highest 
 order. But I venture to assert, from what 
 I have known of him, that it would be a mistake 
 to reckon the author of the " Nouveau Monde " 
 among contemporary cabalists. 
 
 His ideal soared further and higher far 
 than the magic art cultivated so assiduously, 
 and not altogether unremuneratively, by that 
 long-haired young sar, Josephin Peladan. 
 Though the occult sciences may overwhelm 
 and infatuate the intelligence of Peladan at the 
 close of this century, and Rohan at the dawn 
 of the Revolution, to such vigorous geniuses 
 as Goethe in Germany and Villiers de 1'Isle 
 Adam in France they are but a step to be 
 boldly taken in the approach towards divine 
 truth. 
 
 And I should like to say here, to the honour 
 of the great writer whose work and character 
 have been so much misunderstood, that Villiers 
 de Flsle Adam was all his life a convinced and 
 fervent Roman Catholic. The study of the
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 153 
 
 philosophy of all times and every country, the 
 study of the human mind, and the study of 
 nature, all only strengthened his faith. He 
 firmly believed that God was good, and that 
 the Devil was wicked, in Heaven, in Purgatory, 
 in Hell. Through all those hours of physical 
 agony and moral suffering which he endured 
 before his soul escaped to Paradise, he found 
 the source of all his hope and all his consola- 
 tion in prayer. His life, indeed, like the lives 
 of most great artists, was full of faults and 
 failures, but whenever he had a chance of 
 fighting the good fight in the cause of reli- 
 gion and of our divine ideal, he did it with a 
 fervour and an enthusiasm which proved the 
 sincerity of his convictions. And doubtless 
 God will count that to him for righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 "One of the most deeply-rooted feelings in 
 Villiers' soul," wrote M. G. Guiches, very 
 truly, the day after the poet's death (" Figaro," 
 August 1 8, 1889), "was the strong, honest, 
 tender, religious sentiment which would make 
 his eyes fill with tears whenever the divine 
 mysteries were spoken of in his presence.
 
 154 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 Neither the promiscuous cafe life, throughout 
 which he always preserved his haughty inde- 
 pendence of heart and mind, nor his copious 
 and inventive flow of banter, ever touched 
 with the faintest stain the royal ermine of his 
 faith. On those loose sheets on which, like 
 Baudelaire, he was in the habit of noting 
 down his thoughts, side by side with prosaic 
 memoranda of daily life, and naive resolutions, 
 such as 'not to smoke so much,' phrases like 
 the following occur : ' It is a sin to mourn for 
 a dead child. It has entered into its glory.' 
 Among these fragments, too, are touching 
 litanies to the Virgin : ' Mother of the good 
 God ! O thou, my Mother ! thou who 
 intercedest, sure that thou shalt be heard ! 
 Thou who standest on Calvary ! Thou who 
 canst pardon ! Heel that crushest the ser- 
 pent ! Whiteness of the eternal dawn ! Glory 
 of human tears ! Light of the eastern star ! 
 Thou soul of chastity ! Thou resignation of 
 the poor ! ' etc., etc., etc. 
 
 " To an author who told him the atro- 
 ciously cynical title of his lately-published 
 book, he answered boldly : ' Such things
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 155 
 
 should never be written. Those are words 
 that will come back to you on your death- 
 bed/" 
 
 As I am in a vein of quotation, I will cite 
 one more charming anecdote on the same 
 subject, related in the " Revue Blanc " by M. 
 Henri Laujol, one of Villiers' earliest comrades. 
 
 " I remember," he says, " receiving a visit 
 from Villiers one day, while I was reading 
 Hceckel's ' History of the Creation.' I can see 
 him now, turning over the leaves, looking at 
 the woodcuts, and weighing the book in his 
 hand, with much pantomimic alarm. He 
 asked how much that grand book had cost, 
 and I told him the price, somewhere about 
 ten francs. ' The catechism costs only two 
 sous ! ' was his reply. It was a regular coun- 
 try parson's remark. But Villiers was so 
 delighted at having made it that he spent his 
 whole afternoon repeating it to me, droning it 
 out in every sort of key, now falsetto, now bass, 
 and then again in a Tyrolese jodel ; interrupt- 
 ing himself, now and then, to laugh at the top 
 of his voice. I could get nothing else out of 
 him the whole of that day."
 
 156 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 But I must turn from our bygone talks to 
 register here an incident of his life on the 
 boulevards, which he related to me one even- 
 ing, and which was to give birth to that 
 famous novel, " L'Eve Future," which ap- 
 peared long afterwards at Brunhoff's, with 
 this motto attached to it : " Transitoriis qucere 
 ceterna"
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A metamorphosis An ambitious pastry-cook Appearance 
 of the newspaper, "La Croix et PEpee" Its political, 
 
 artistic, and literary programme Lord E W 
 
 His strange suicide The wax figure A nocturnal 
 conversation The American engineer and his 
 master, Edison First conception of "L'Eve Future" 
 Villiers de ITsle Adam and Thomas Alva Edison. 
 
 OT long before the famous Lockroy 
 lawsuit, Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, for 
 the first time in his life, had found 
 himself in a regularly established 
 position. He had given the frequenters of 
 the boulevards and of the newspaper offices 
 the unwonted spe6lacle of a Villiers in brand- 
 new clothes and a brilliantly smart silk hat 
 a Villiers with a grave face and a well-filled 
 pocket-book, whose fingers rattled keys and 
 five-franc pieces together in his pockets a
 
 158 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 Villiers, in fine, who breakfasted at the Cafe 
 Riche, and had his table every night at 
 Brebant's (that restaurant so dear to literary 
 men), in the celebrated first-floor room so 
 graphically described in the journals of the 
 De Goncourt. The reason of this ephemeral 
 change in the poet's life is worthy of a place 
 in the "Arabian Nights." A retired con- 
 fectioner, devoured by political and literary 
 ambition, and convinced, doubtless, that his 
 success in making fancy biscuits gave him a 
 right to put his fingers into the great political 
 pie, desired to found a newspaper to be the 
 organ of his opinions. This, in itself, is a very 
 ordinary fact, not particularly worthy of note. 
 Many an ambitious vulgarian is not content 
 without a newspaper slavishly devoted to his 
 interests. But this pastry-cook, who shall be 
 nameless, became absolutely heroic, and un- 
 doubtedly worthy to be mentioned to pos- 
 terity when, out of all the starving writers 
 who trod the cruel and horrible Paris pave- 
 ments, he chose that unmerciful scoffer, Villiers 
 de 1'Isle Adam, as his representative andatier 
 ego.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 159 
 
 A play or a story might be written about 
 the ups and downs of the astounding news- 
 paper which was the outcome of this strange 
 union. I have only time to throw some hasty 
 touches on the canvas. 
 
 Villiers was chief editor, reporter, critic, and 
 article-writer at one and the same time. The 
 confectioner was director, manager, and cashier. 
 He gave the poet five hundred francs a month, 
 and left him absolutely free to express his own 
 political, artistic, and literary opinions, exacting 
 two things only : firstly, that " his newspaper " 
 should mention him, individually, every day ; 
 and secondly, that " his newspaper " should 
 make a stir in the capital. His desire was 
 more than gratified ! 
 
 " La Croix et 1'Epee," the Cross and Sword 
 (high-sounding title !), claimed, in matters of 
 religion, the right of every soldier to swear 
 round oaths and go to mass ; politically, it 
 supported the claim of the Naundorffs to the 
 throne of France ; artistically, it put the sym- 
 bolist painters above Raphael ; poetically, it 
 proclaimed Stephane Mallarme the prince of 
 rhyme, and defended the School of the Incom-
 
 160 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 prehensibles ; and musically, it was belligerently 
 and exclusively Wagnerian. At the end of 
 six months the newspaper disappeared, the 
 confectioner went back to his province, and 
 Villiers found himself back on the boulevards, 
 poorer than ever in pocket, but rich still in 
 splendid hopes, and answering the hypo- 
 critical condolences of his fellow-journalists 
 with his usual phrase, " Yes, yes ! Many 
 thanks ! But all is not lost! Next winter, we 
 shall see ! " 
 
 It was during this period of relative pros- 
 perity that he caught a glimpse of the in- 
 dividual who gave him the first idea for his 
 novel, " L'Eve Future." 
 
 One evening he saw coming into Brebant's, 
 arm-in-arm with one of the attaches of the 
 British Embassy, a young Englishman whose 
 singular face aroused his imagination. 
 
 " He was both handsome and sad-looking," 
 Villiers used to tell me, in his enthusiastic 
 way, "and I saw at once in the expression of 
 his eyes that grave and scornful look of 
 melancholy which always betokens a hidden 
 despair."
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 161 
 
 This young man's name (I only give the 
 
 initials) was Lord E W . His tragic 
 
 end attracted attention in Paris for some time. 
 He destroyed himself, very deliberately, some 
 days after Villiers met him. Stretched beside 
 him, in a magnificent dress, bespattered with 
 his blood, was found an admirably-made lay 
 figure, representing a young woman, whose 
 waxen face, modelled by a great artist, was 
 the portrait of a young lady well known in 
 London for her brilliant beauty, and who had 
 been engaged to be married to the eccentric 
 young nobleman. 
 
 Was this suicide merely the result of one 
 of those strange hereditary manias which 
 alffli6t some families of the English aristo- 
 cracy ? Or was the mysterious catastrophe 
 of some dramatic and passionate love affair 
 to be read in the presence of the wonderful 
 doll on the young man's deathbed ? The 
 young attache inclined to this latter opinion. 
 
 According to his view, Lord E W 
 
 had been the victim of an extraordinary 
 fatality. He adored the physical loveliness 
 of the young girl ; he was perpetually haunted 
 
 M
 
 1 62 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 by her magnificent beauty ; but he held her 
 mind and soul, and everything in her that 
 was not material, in the deepest abhorrence. 
 Hence arose the slowly-developed madness 
 which ended in his death. 
 
 These things were related one night at the 
 restaurant, before Villiers and a small circle 
 of habituts. An American engineer an elec- 
 trician, as they call them over there rose from 
 his seat, and quietly said, " I am sorry your 
 friend did not apply to me ; I might have 
 cured him." "You! how?" "How! Great 
 Scott ! I would have given his doll life, soul, 
 movement, love ! " The assembled company, 
 being sceptical as to miracles, burst out laugh- 
 ing, all but Villiers, who seemed to be absorbed 
 in rolling his cigarette. " You may laugh, 
 stranger," said the American gravely, as he 
 picked up his hat and stick, " but the time 
 will come when my great master, Edison, will 
 teach you that electricity is an almighty 
 power," and with that he went out. 
 
 These facts and this nocturnal conversa- 
 tion gave birth to " L'Eve Future," one of the 
 most original works of this end of the century.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 163 
 
 Those who have perused this masterpiece of 
 eloquent raillery, by the poet who, to use M. 
 Henri Laujol's happy expression, "had vowed 
 a monkish hatred against modern science, that 
 handmaid of utilitarianism," will doubtless 
 recollect that the general notion and argu- 
 ment of the story follow almost identically 
 the facts I have just related. But Villiers 
 was not one of those half-artists who are 
 satisfied with their first idea, and work it out 
 the moment chance has presented it to their 
 brain. It was only after revolving it in his 
 mind, pondering and brooding over it, that 
 he began to write his novel, the first wonder- 
 ful pages of which, with their description of 
 Menloe Park and its terrifying proprietor, 
 Thomas Alva Edison, he read to me in 1879. 
 When the great inventor himself came to 
 Paris in 1889 to see our exhibition, somebody 
 sent him De 1'Isle Adam's book. He read it 
 through without putting it down, and said to 
 one of his intimates, " That man is greater 
 than I. I can only in vent. He creates!" He 
 desired to make the author's acquaintance, but, 
 alas ! poor Villiers, already stricken by the fell
 
 1 64 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 disease of which he died, could not respond 
 to Edison's invitation. This is deeply to be 
 regretted. Can anything more curious and 
 more interesting be imagined than a conver- 
 sation between the progenitor of Dr. Triboulat 
 Bonhomet and the father of the phonograph ? 
 Soon after he had related the curious origin 
 of his contemplated work to me, my eccentric 
 friend suddenly disappeared from my sight.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Villiers' absent-mindedness His terrible carelessness 
 His departure from Bordeaux Godefrin's despair 
 A year later Bohemian poverty A justification 
 Want of money Villiers' difficulties His pride 
 His artistic conscientiousness Drumont's book 
 Villiers and the young Jew A good answer Villiers' 
 manner of life His midnight wanderings His dis- 
 like of daylight Villiers and Anatole France. 
 
 MOST disconcerting thing about 
 Villiers, which used to exasperate 
 his best friends till his dying day, 
 was his perpetual absent-minded- 
 ness, which led him to forget the most impor- 
 tant appointments, to break off, for long 
 months on end, his most intimate daily 
 relations, and only occasionally to fulfil the 
 engagements he might make with editors of 
 reviews or publishers. The uncertainty of 
 his movements kept one continually on the
 
 166 VILLIERS DE L'JSLE ADAM. 
 
 alert ; you could never tell when he would 
 come or when he would go. I have described 
 his sudden apparition in my house at Bor- 
 deaux. His departure was just as unexpected. 
 We had talked the whole night long ; at early 
 dawn I went to get a little rest, and when I 
 rose it was already late. I inquired after 
 Villiers ; he had gone out, and hours passed 
 without his return. In vain I sought him. 
 Without beat of drum he had disappeared, 
 melted away like a shadow. 
 
 A few days after I met Godefrin with a 
 long face. He had just received a letter 
 from the inconstant writer, dated from Paris, 
 demanding the immediate return of the manu- 
 script of the " Nouveau Monde." His con- 
 versation was one flood of recriminations. 
 For my own part, inured long since as I was 
 to the poet's offhand ways, I was only half- 
 surprised, and I did my best to console the 
 unhappy director, whom I have not had the 
 good fortune to meet since that interview. 
 
 Towards me Villiers preserved an un- 
 broken silence. Indeed, I might have thought 
 him dead, and myself forgotten, if the post had
 
 VILLIERS DE L'JSLE ADAM. 167 
 
 not brought me packets containing articles, 
 tales, or fanciful conceits of his, cut out of 
 newspapers and magazines, and which, ad- 
 dressed as they were by his own hand, proved 
 that he was not "the late De 1'Isle Adam," 
 and that I still lived in his memory. 
 
 It was difficult, after all was said and done, 
 to bear him a grudge because of his exaspera- 
 ting carelessness, for when you next met him, 
 after a disappearance of five or six months, he 
 would address you as if he had only left you 
 the night before. If you reproached him, he 
 would gaze at you with an innocent and 
 puzzled air, seemingly quite unconscious of his 
 sin ; and then he had such a particular way of 
 exclaiming, "What! I did that! oh, come, come! 
 impossible ! you must be chaffing me ! " that 
 nobody could keep their countenance nor their 
 bad temper long. Personally I was not to see 
 him for two years. Alas ! when we met again 
 in Paris in 1879, 1 saw that poverty was slowly 
 accomplishing its destructive work. Never 
 had the Bohemian life which he so coura- 
 geously accepted, seemed more utterly dreary. 
 He needed all his power of hopefulness to
 
 1 68 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 endure it. But though his heart was as stout, 
 his imagination as brilliant, his mind as active 
 as ever, the bodily frame was beginning to tire 
 and its machinery to break down, thanks to 
 bad food, want of care, and the late hours 
 and noxious tobacco-laden air of tavern life. 
 Living as I did in Paris the whole of that year, 
 I contrived to withdraw him a little from the 
 infernal round which was destroying his life. 
 But I never deceived myself. I felt it was 
 only a respite, and that he would always have 
 a longing for that eccentric and feverish exis- 
 tence which devoured him body and soul and 
 hastened his end. 
 
 This year of grace 1879 was the last we 
 spent together, and it was the time of our 
 closest intimacy. Before reviving some memo- 
 ries of it, I desire to defend Villiers against an 
 unjust accusation, which is frequently brought 
 against him. He has been accused, both in life 
 and after death, of being a dissipated tavern- 
 bird, a lover of low company. It has been 
 asserted that his want of success arose princi- 
 pally from his own bad conduct, his want of 
 moral sense, his indolence, and the doubtful
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 169 
 
 company he frequented. To those who only 
 knew him casually these accusations bear an 
 appearance of truth fatal to the poet's good 
 name. But we who were acquainted with 
 his inner life, and have watched him through 
 the hard trials of his laborious existence, know 
 how little he deserved the reproaches of these 
 wiseacres. We knew the nobility of his nature, 
 the innate delicacy of his tastes, his passion 
 for work, his scorn of material enjoyments. 
 And we know how, little by little, this gifted 
 being was driven by evil fortune to live in an 
 atmosphere unworthy of him, and how, too, 
 little by little, and after many a revolt, he 
 grew accustomed to it. 
 
 May I be permitted, then, within the space 
 of a few lines, to attempt the justification of 
 the slipshod and Bohemian manner of life of 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam. It will give me an 
 opportunity of showing the original and com- 
 plex character of the artist in a new light. 
 
 The faithful autobiography of a writer 
 living in Paris during the last twenty years, 
 without any other means of support than his 
 own talents, would be a gloomier and a sadder
 
 170 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 book than Dante's " Inferno." But it would 
 likewise be a healthy and instructive one, a 
 sort of warning beacon which should save 
 many a young and promising life from ruin, 
 shame, and death. Though there are some 
 indomitable natures which rise higher and 
 gain in strength through the struggle with 
 misfortune, there are many more, and highly 
 gifted ones too, which are lowered and 
 crushed down by despicable cares, grinding 
 poverty, and anxiety concerning the earning 
 of daily bread. True as it may be that 
 energy, moral strength, and artistic conviction 
 form a solid suit of armour, yet I hold that the 
 thinnest silver cuirass is more useful for win- 
 ning the final victory. And that which hin- 
 dered Villiers from climbing to the highest 
 eminence was above all things his want of 
 money. 
 
 This condition of penury must have been 
 all the more prejudicial and painful to him, 
 because the ddbut of his career was so suc- 
 cessful as to be almost an apotheosis. 
 
 Excessively proud, and with a lively sen- 
 timent for the illustrious name he bore, he
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 171 
 
 would never, when poverty came upon him, 
 undertake any of those lucrative, if ignoble 
 jobs, which in these days are always to be 
 had about the literary world. He carried 
 his respect for his calling as far as his respect 
 for his ancestry, and no matter how pressing 
 his need was, he would never send a hastily- 
 finished page, nor even sentence, to the 
 printer. He read and re-read everything, 
 first low, then loud, and finally, when the 
 whole was weeded and corrected, he would 
 declaim it in that clear sonorous voice which 
 he always used when reciting his own 
 writings. According to him, the worst crime 
 a writer can commit is to sell himself. And 
 in this connection I will record an authen- 
 ticated anecdote which ends with a remark 
 by the author of " L'Eve Future " which 
 almost touches the sublime. 
 
 Immediately after the appearance of " La 
 France Juive," the Jewish community in 
 Paris looked about for a writer equal to the 
 task of returning the murderous knockdown 
 blows of the terrible Drumont. Somebody 
 suggested Villiers de 1'Isle Adam. A noble
 
 iyz VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 name, a brilliant talent, and in straits of 
 poverty probably to be had very cheap ! A 
 nice little glossy well-combed Jew, who then 
 looked, perhaps still looks, after the censor- 
 ship in the back office of a fashionable pub- 
 lisher, was sent to call upon him. Villiers, 
 struggling with the direst poverty, often 
 without half a franc in his pocket, was living 
 in a big, bare, dark, cold room, somewhere 
 on the heights of Montmartre, where he 
 still possessed an old easy-chair, a ricketty 
 table, and a poor asthmatic piano, which the 
 bailiffs had despised. Here the young Jew 
 found the last descendant of the Grand Mas- 
 ter of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. 
 Unctuously servile, and with an exaggerated 
 show of respe6l, the messenger of the syna- 
 gogue explained its desire, concluding by 
 saying that there could be no bargaining 
 with a writer of such distinction, and that the 
 Comte Villiers de 1'Isle Adam had only to 
 name his own price. Then he waited in 
 silence for the answer of Villiers, who had 
 listened without interrupting, rolling a ciga- 
 rette in his white fingers, his absent glance half
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 173 
 
 hidden by the thick lock that fell over his 
 brow. When his interlocutor had ceased 
 speaking, he raised his head, and fixing on 
 him his clear blue eyes, filled now with 
 sudden flame, he answered in a ringing 
 voice, " My price, sir ? It has not altered 
 since the days of our Saviour ! Thirty pieces 
 of silver ! " Then, rising and wrapping 
 around him his tattered old dressing-gown, 
 he pointed to the door with a gesture that 
 the illustrious marshal, his ancestor, might 
 have envied, and added, " Begone, sir!" 
 
 But I have wandered from my subject. 
 I was saying that poverty had been a hard 
 stepmother to Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, forcing 
 him from his youth up to shape his life to 
 the Bohemian habits of a vagabond Parisian 
 life, and to such habits he gradually became 
 accustomed. Serious and well-established 
 people, as well as self-important and overfed 
 middle-class folk, used to reproach him bit- 
 terly with the carelessness of his existence, 
 with his slipshod behaviour, above all, with 
 his assiduous frequentation of those nocturnal 
 places of entertainment, which, under the
 
 174 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 name of wine-shops, brasseries, and artists' 
 taverns, swarm between the Faubourg Mont- 
 martre and the Boulevard de Clichy. Yet 
 how many good excuses there were for this 
 so-called life of idleness and debauchery ! 
 
 If Villiers, without being rich, had pos- 
 sessed a few pounds a year, if he could have 
 made for himself, somewhere in the formidable 
 city, ever so small a corner where he might 
 have dreamed his brilliant beautiful dreams, 
 and written, and thought, without anxiety 
 concerning his daily pittance, I, who was 
 his friend, will affirm that the witty and 
 eloquent frequenters of the " Chat Noir " 
 and the " Rat Mort " would have known him 
 less, and, what is more to the purpose, less 
 intimately. But driven by dire necessity to 
 pitch his tent in some empty lodging or 
 dreary hotel room, he had such a horror, 
 aristocratic being, dainty poet, charming 
 artist as he was, of the hideous dwellings 
 into which his evil fate had penned him, 
 that he fled from them, preferring to make 
 all Paris his home, and to say, in the words 
 of Bruant's working man, " T'es dans la rue,
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 175 
 
 va, t'es chez toi ! " " You're in the gutter ? 
 then you are at home ! " 
 
 It was walking the pavements, on the 
 terraces of cafes, and with his elbow on the 
 stained tavern tables, that he imagined, dis- 
 cussed, and partly wrote, some of his finest 
 works. Every imaginative being, moreover, 
 wants some nervous excitement to quicken 
 his brain process, and Villiers more especially 
 was the victim of this need. He could not 
 evolve his ideas and present them clearly 
 to his own mind without discussion, and 
 therefore without somebody to discuss them 
 with. If prosperity had been granted to him, 
 he might have found all this in artistic circles, 
 at his own fireside, in friendly gatherings, 
 perhaps in the drawing-room of some woman 
 of fashion. Poor as he was, and driven into 
 Bohemian life, he had to fall back on his 
 wild nocturnal habits, and on the hubbub 
 of the tavern, where ideas and words meet 
 and clash noisily through clouds of tobacco 
 smoke, amidst the rattle of glasses and the 
 noisy laughter of loose women. 
 
 I owe it, however, to truth to say that
 
 176 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 Villiers' love of late hours was not altogether 
 the result of circumstances. He was essen- 
 tially a night-bird. He hated the daylight, 
 and always called the sun a hideous planet, 
 which, he declared, lighted nature up badly, 
 and spoiled her beauty. Even in his best 
 days, he never became quite himself until 
 his kindly little friends the stars blinked 
 down at him out of the sky. 
 
 The brilliant critic of the " Temps," M. 
 Anatole France, tells us, in a kindly sketch 
 dedicated to the memory of De 1'Isle Adam, 
 that, being in want of exact information con- 
 cerning the poet's ancestors for some literary 
 work on which he was engaged, he went 
 one day to look him up at his lodgings at 
 Montmartre. He was received smilingly, 
 but when he announced the object of his 
 visit, the master of the house looked per- 
 plexed, doubtful, and troubled. He began 
 to stammer, and at last, almost in tears, he 
 exclaimed : " How can you expect me to 
 talk to you about my ancestors, the illustrious 
 grand master and the famous marshal, in 
 bright sunshine like this, at ten o'clock in
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 177 
 
 the morning ? " He really was in utter dis- 
 may, and the witty critic had to exert himself 
 to the utmost to restore him to his equa- 
 nimity and obtain the necessary information 
 from him. 
 
 N
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 1879 The Rue des Martyrs and the Rue Rochechouart 
 The poet's room His extraordinary indifference 
 Le"on Dierx " La De'voue'e " Strange habits 
 Villiers in the street The Boulevard Montmartre 
 Nocturnal declamations Villiers as a composer 
 Two operas, "Esmeralda" and " Prometheus "- 
 Melomania Villiers as a musical performer A 
 strange couple. 
 
 N 1879 Villiers inhabited a room 
 in a furnished hotel in the Rue 
 des Martyrs, nearly at the corner 
 of the Rue Clauzel. Chance had 
 made us neighbours, for I was living at the 
 corner of the Rue Rochechouart and the Rue 
 de Maubeuge, at the very top of an enormous 
 house let out in flats, and from my balcony I 
 could see all over Paris. As to the poet's 
 room, it was just as commonplace as might 
 have been expected in a tenth-rate furnished 
 lodging-house. A mahogany bed, chair, and
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 179 
 
 chest of drawers, an imitation Wilton carpet, 
 and the inevitable wardrobe with a looking- 
 glass in it. Should this last happen to gape 
 open, one perceived on every shelf, not linen, 
 nor clothes of any description, but piles of 
 manuscript, books, newspapers, and magazines. 
 The extreme indifference of the great 
 writer to the material comforts of life greatly 
 assisted him in bearing the pangs of poverty. 
 I never knew him take thought for the 
 morrow, in the literal sense of the term, 
 though he thought and talked a great deal 
 about the future in general. But he never 
 troubled his head as to whether he had a 
 shirt to his back ; and had it not been for the 
 care of some devoted friends, I really believe 
 he would have ended by going out-of-doors 
 half-dressed, or by spending several months 
 in bed for want of clothes. Luckily, a sort 
 of earthly providence seemed to watch over 
 him, and supply his most pressing needs. 
 One of his best loved and most faithful friends, 
 Leon Dierx, lived in the same house, and 
 looked after him without seeming to do so, 
 for Villiers was as touchy as he was careless.
 
 i8o VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 But, above all others, there was a worthy 
 woman, a retired midwife, who had attached 
 herself to the poet with a canine devotion 
 which used to bring the tears to my eyes. The 
 jests, the snubbing, even the furies of her 
 idol, could not dishearten her. She treated 
 him with a delicate tenderness which the 
 most passionately devoted mistress might have 
 envied. The great writer, with the Bohemian 
 indifference of the man who owns nothing, 
 used, when he came in at dawn, worn out 
 with holding forth and discussing, to leave 
 his door unlocked, and the key in it. This 
 excellent soul would seize her opportunity, 
 come in on tiptoe, take his poor, stained, 
 shabby garments, mend them as best she 
 could, and then restore them to their place. 
 Often she would bring a clean shirt, and lay 
 it on the foot of the bed. When Villiers took 
 it into his head to get up and go out, about 
 the time the gas was being lighted in the 
 streets, he would put on the first thing that 
 came under his hand, without ever noticing 
 the changes in and additions to his wardrobe 
 made by this admirable woman, whom we
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 181 
 
 had nicknamed " La Devouee," " the devoted 
 one." When I became the poet's neighbour, 
 I often made use of her. She would put 
 coats and trousers of mine beside him while 
 he slept ; and I often had a struggle to keep 
 my countenance when I saw my friend dressed 
 up in my cast-off clothes, which used to give 
 him a most peculiar appearance, for while I 
 was long and thin, he was short and broad. 
 But he went on unmoved, and never suspected 
 anything. 
 
 The waiter of the hotel had also been 
 coached. He used to enter Villiers' room, 
 every day towards noon, carrying a large 
 bowl of soup, into which a penny roll had 
 been cut up. Should the poet be asleep, he 
 took care not to rouse him. If Villiers was 
 awake, he would call out threateningly, 
 " What's that ? " " Breakfast, sir ! " said the 
 waiter, and hastily putting the bowl down, 
 he departed. Mechanically Villiers would 
 swallow bread and soup, and think no more 
 of the almost daily recurring incident. He 
 never had any other meal before his even- 
 ing one.
 
 1 82 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 I got into the habit of going to see him 
 between three and four o'clock in the after- 
 noons. I generally found him sitting up in 
 bed, supported by several pillows, hard at work, 
 and only stopping his writing to roll a ciga- 
 rette, which, as often as not, he did not light. 
 Lying on the eiderdown quilt, which covered 
 his knees, was a pouchful of his favourite 
 Maryland tobacco, books of cigarette papers, 
 and piles of sheets covered with his fine and 
 delicately-formed handwriting. He never 
 wrote with anything but pencil, which made 
 the compositors' work very difficult, especially 
 as in reading his work over he would gene- 
 rally alter one word out of five. 
 
 As soon as he saw me (sometimes I stood 
 in front of him for ten minutes before he was 
 aware of my presence, so completely did his 
 work absorb him), he would start, and exclaim, 
 "What, is that you, cousin? What o'clock 
 is it ? The window, the window ! " and before 
 I could do anything to stop him, he would 
 jump out of bed, and, regardless of weather or 
 temperature, throw the window wide open. 
 Then he would get back into bed, put his
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 183 
 
 hand through his heavy forelock, look at me 
 in a confused sort of way, and end by burst- 
 ing out laughing. These antics usually had 
 the result of sending tobacco, cigarettes, and 
 sheets of paper flying across the room, and, if 
 there was any wind, whirling round the table. 
 I used to rush to the rescue of the precious 
 prose, and when I had collected and put the 
 scattered manuscript in order as well as I 
 could, I would sit down in the only armchair, 
 and our talks would begin. At last, towards 
 six o'clock, and by dint of persecution, I con- 
 trived to drag him from between the sheets, 
 and out we went into the streets. 
 
 The street ! Ah ! when one walked it arm-in- 
 arm with Villiers, it was no longer a common- 
 place and more or less symmetrical assemblage 
 of paving-stones, asphalte side-walks, road- 
 ways, shops, and houses. It became a strange 
 entity, with a million different living existences 
 a hybrid, complex, contradictory being, by 
 turns mysterious, terrible, cynical, innocent, 
 cruel, loving, tragic, or grotesque. By dint 
 of treading it for so many years, he had taken 
 root in it, and was, so to speak, one of the
 
 184 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 strangest products, the most striking types, of 
 that world, at once so great and so limited, in 
 which certain figures stand out with such 
 clearness from the moving mass, that, once 
 seen, they can never be forgotten. Amongst 
 those physiognomies which seem to form an 
 integral part of the street crowd, and which 
 one misses there when death removes them, 
 some are dramatic, some comic, some hideous. 
 Some are sad, some poetic, others mad ; but 
 all attract your attention, and even obtrude 
 themselves on your notice, by some personal 
 originality of appearance. And in no case 
 more so than in that of Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, 
 with his supple and yet uncertain gait, his 
 immeasurable scorn of the laws of fashion, and 
 that sleep-walking look which the cruel and 
 much dreaded irony of his speech and laughter 
 belied. He knew all the secrets, all the hidden 
 sores, all the grandeur, of the merciless streets 
 of Paris. In the course of our perambula- 
 tions together, he would point out to me 
 houses of whose secret dramas, comedies, or 
 idylls, he knew every detail. He would ex- 
 plain, with that sort of stammer which added
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 185 
 
 to the charm of his talk, that the exterior 
 of houses generally matched their interior 
 history ; that there were murderous ones, 
 broken-hearted ones, gay ones ; that some 
 were passionate, some sepulchral, some volup- 
 tuous, ay, and some haunted even. For he 
 averred, and quoted many a strange story in 
 support of his opinion, that there were more 
 haunted houses in Paris than in any other 
 town in Europe. Several of them he had 
 inhabited himself. And the recent events in 
 the house on the Quai Voltaire would have 
 filled him with delight. I make no doubt 
 whatever he would have liked to live there. 
 
 But it was especially when we reached the 
 Boulevard Montmartre " a 1'heure de 1'ab- 
 sinthe," that Villiers became my most invalu- 
 able guide and cicerone. All that population 
 of charlatans which swarms before the cafes, 
 money-lenders, money-getters, and rogues 
 sham litterateurs and sham artists jour- 
 nalists, venal, if not already bought, scandal- 
 mongers, masters in the art of blackmail, 
 stealers of other men's ideas, well-dressed 
 blackguards, elegantly apparelled demi-mon-
 
 186 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 daines, swindlers, rastaqiioueres, he unmasked 
 them all in short, sharp, vengeful sentences, 
 burning with implacable scorn. And in the 
 very bitterness of his satire, one felt how 
 these beasts of prey must have devoured his 
 flesh and his substance. They meanwhile 
 pretended to respe<5t, while hating and fearing 
 him. They dreaded those terrible sarcasms, 
 which the next day's papers would noise 
 abroad, as the galley-slave dreads the brand- 
 ing iron. So they bowed themselves down 
 before him, and as soon as he was past they 
 stabbed him in the back. 
 
 After these walks, Villiers often came and 
 shared the simple dinner which my Breton 
 cook used to prepare for me ; and this made 
 a change for him from the indescribable and 
 poisonous eating-house stews on which he 
 was in the habit of feeding. 
 
 There were two things besides the fact of 
 our friendship which had the precious gift of 
 retaining Villiers in my house during the 
 evening hours : my balcony, and an excellent 
 piano by Pleyel, which was the chief adorn- 
 ment of the little sitting-room.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 187 
 
 On soft clear nights we used to spend 
 much of our time leaning over the balcony, 
 smoking almost silently, and letting our 
 dreamy thoughts, grave or gay, wander across 
 the great tumultuous-looking sea of roofs, 
 whose dark, motionless waves seemed to lose 
 themselves in the mists of the horizon. Now 
 and then Villiers would draw himself up, 
 erect and very pale, and stretching out his 
 white hand, as though to claim the attention 
 of the night, he would recite in a ringing 
 voice some passage out of whatever work he 
 might be engaged upon. His memory was 
 so good that he knew by heart almost every- 
 thing he had ever written. In such surround- 
 ings the effect was profoundly impressive. 
 High over our heads the twinkling stars ; 
 at our feet the huge city, its continuous roar 
 rising towards us ; while from the lips of the 
 poet the harmoniously balanced periods fell 
 in even, eloquent flow, clear, sonorous, and 
 strangely melodious. He would work him- 
 self up at the sound of his own voice, and, 
 his eyes fixed in a sort of ecstasy and his 
 gestures raised to God, he seemed no longer
 
 1 88 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 to belong to earth. And I listened, dumb 
 with admiration. And when at last he 
 ceased to speak, it seemed to me that a lamp 
 had suddenly gone out, and that the world 
 was darkened around me. Villiers thus 
 recited to me all the finest passages of " L'Eve 
 Future," and I vividly remember* the state 
 of wild delight into which we were both put 
 by the chapter headed "The Puppet addresses 
 the Night." 1 We would re-enter the drawing- 
 room, and Villiers, still shivering with the 
 excitement of inspiration, would rush to the 
 piano, and, striking some powerful chords, 
 would begin with the full strength of his 
 voice the magnificent choral invocation in 
 the first ai of " Lohengrin " " O Dieu du 
 del en qui faifoi ! " 
 
 If Villiers had applied himself to music, 
 instead of choosing literature as his profession, 
 I believe he might have been as remarkable 
 and original a composer as he was a writer. 
 Music is, of all the arts, the one which 
 requires the greatest number of innate and, 
 
 1 In the final edition this chapter bears the title 
 "God."
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 189 
 
 so to speak, instinctive qualities, and these 
 natural gifts he possessed to an extraordinary 
 degree. From his earliest youth he had a 
 feeling for rhythm and time, a correctness of 
 ear, and a musical memory, which astonished 
 his teachers. Yet he was never a good 
 pupil, because in this, as in everything else, 
 he loathed routine, and would not submit to 
 a humdrum daily task. But, though he 
 journeyed into the domain of literature, his 
 qualities as a gifted musician followed him 
 thither, and his very prose is musical. 
 
 In the course of his life he composed or 
 improvised a goodly number of strange 
 melodies, songs, melopoeia, which unfor- 
 tunately have never been collected. The 
 best known, which all his friends have heard 
 him sing, and to which I have already re- 
 ferred, interprets that wonderful poem by 
 Charles Baudelaire : 
 
 Nous aurons des lits plains d'odeurs legeres, 
 Des divans profonds comme des tombeaux. 
 
 Our beds shall be scented with sweetest perfume, 
 Our divans be as cool and as dark as the tomb.
 
 1 90 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 I remember two other compositions of his 
 on lines by the author of the " Fleurs du 
 Mai." One, " Le Vin de 1' Assassin," is the 
 song of a man who has killed his wife, and 
 every verse ends with this exclamation by 
 the murderer, to which the music gives an 
 unspeakable and indescribable horror : " Je 
 1'oublierai si je le puis." " I will forget 
 her ! if I can ! " In the other, entitled 
 " Recueillement " ("Meditation"), he had 
 obtained a striking effect with the lingering 
 and mysterious accompaniment to which he 
 had set that beautiful line : " Entends, ma 
 chere, entends la douce nuit qui marche ! " 
 " List, oh, my dear ! list to the night's soft 
 step!" 
 
 I remember, too, though somewhat vaguely, 
 some warlike ironico-popular songs which 
 Villiers used to declaim with incomparable 
 power. He had composed them in 1870, 
 in collaboration with some other artists in 
 the same corps of francs-tireurs, to while 
 away the long night-watches of the siege ; 
 so that the noise of the Prussian artillery, 
 answering our own, was their first accompani-
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 191 
 
 ment. If I add to these short-lived works 
 a sort of comic opera, which never had a 
 definite title, but whose chief and very 
 ludicrous characters were a king, Paf, and 
 his prime minister, Toe, and the chief joke in 
 which was a serenade beginning with the 
 words : 
 
 Si ma priere criminelle 
 
 Pouvait toucher les dieux retors ! 
 
 If then my criminal appeal 
 
 Should touch, for once, the wily gods ! 
 
 I shall, I think, have pretty well exhausted 
 the list of the poet's compositions in the 
 lighter class of music. He was no stranger 
 to the more serious style. He carried in his 
 head (I do not believe he ever noted down 
 an air in his life) two complete opera scores, 
 choruses, orchestration, and directions for 
 scenery, etc., etc., etc. 
 
 One was composed on the subject of the 
 " Esmeralda" of Victor Hugo, so murderously 
 handled by Mdlle. Bertin, the other on the 
 " Prometheus Unbound " of ./Eschylus, put 
 into verse by my father. Those few privi-
 
 192 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 leged persons who, like myself, had the good 
 luck to hear Villiers interpret the principal 
 scenes of these two operas on the piano, 
 will, I am sure, willingly join me in declaring 
 that he affected them in a most unexpected 
 manner, and revealed, rising above numerous 
 gross faults and signs of musical inexperience, 
 many a flash of genius and beauties of the 
 highest order. Anybody susceptible of the 
 slightest artistic emotion could hardly help 
 being stirred, when, after a brilliant intro- 
 duction, in which the tinkling of glasses, the 
 clash of swords, the whirl of the dance, and 
 the shouts of the revellers were all cunningly 
 mingled in seeming disorder, Villiers, in a 
 strident beggar's voice, began the wild open- 
 ing chorus of his " Esmeralda." 
 
 Vive Clopin, Roi de Thune ! 
 Vivent les gueux de Paris ! 
 Faisons nos coups a la brune 
 Heure ou tous les chats sont gris. 
 Dansons ! Narguons Pape et bulle ; 
 Et raillons nous dans nos peaux ; 
 Qu'Avril mouille ou que Juin brule 
 La plume de nos chapeaux !
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 193 
 
 Now a merry health we bring 
 To Paris beggars and their king ! 
 Now we'll practise all our wiles ! 
 On our sport old Bacchus smiles ! 
 Merry fingers dancing snap 
 At Pope or bull, nor care a rap ! 
 
 Let April soak or June embrown 
 The shabby plumes we've worn so long, 
 We'll gaze on them without a frown, 
 And turn our sorrows to a song ! 
 
 Laughing at your sorry plight, 
 Shabby plumes we've worn so long ! 
 Soaked by April's showers light, 
 Burnt by June's relentless sun ! 
 
 Claude Frollo's air, with an accompaniment 
 of Satanic laughter, made one shiver with 
 horror : 
 
 Eh bien, oui ! qu'importe ! 
 Le destin m'emporte, 
 La main est trop forte, 
 Je cede a sa loi ! 
 
 Demon qui m'enivres 
 Qu'evoquent mes livres, 
 Si tu me la livres 
 Je me livre a toi ! 
 
 O
 
 194 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 Regois sous ton aile 
 Le pretre infidele ! 
 L'enfer avec elle 
 C'est mon ciel a moi ! 
 
 For good then, or ill, 
 "Tis Destiny's will ! 
 In terrified awe 
 I bow to its law ! 
 
 Friend raised in my heart 
 By magic's black art ! 
 If thou grant her to me, 
 I'll yield me to thee ! 
 
 Receive 'neath thy wing 
 This priest full of sin ! 
 All the heaven I desire 
 Is her kiss, in hell fire ! 
 
 Having accentuated this last phrase with 
 furious energy, Villiers would spring from his 
 seat, in an indescribable state of excitement, 
 and walk up and down the room, his hands 
 raised to heaven, and his eyes flashing, 
 repeating in every sort of tone : 
 
 L'enfer avec elle 
 C'est mon ciel a moi !
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 195 
 
 Very different were the sensations of the 
 audience when the poet, lightly touching the 
 notes with his delicate hands, began the slow, 
 melancholy rhythm of the admirable chorus of 
 the Oceanides in the " Prometheus Unbound," 
 with its arpeggio accompaniment like the beat- 
 ing of distant wings. 
 
 (Having calmed the paternal fears) 
 
 Je t'aime, apaise ton effroi, 
 Sur les vents aux rapides ailes 
 J 'arrive de loin jusqu'a toi. 
 
 A peine ai-je entendu dans notre grotte obscure 
 Le marteau sur le fer, que mon coeur s'est trouble". 
 
 J'ai monte sur ce char aile 
 Dans mon empressement oubliant ma chaussure, 
 
 Et la pudeur au sein voile. 
 
 Oh, corps desseche sur la pierre ! 
 Oh, meurtrissures et douleurs ! 
 Un nuage effrayant de pleurs 
 S'appesantit sur ma paupiere ! 
 
 I love thee ! Prithee calm thy fear ! 
 
 The fleet-winged winds have brought me here, 
 
 Hastening thy trembling heart to cheer !
 
 196 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 Scarce did I hear the hammer fall, 
 With iron clang, in our dark grot, 
 Than terror-struck, forgetting all 
 In my wild haste, and recking not 
 Of modesty, with close-veiled breast- 
 With feet unsandalled, bosom bare, 
 I sprang, obeying love's behest, 
 Upon my car, and clove the air. 
 
 Oh, wasted body on the stones ! 
 Oh, cruel bruises, bitterest pain ! 
 My sorrow-laden spirit groans, 
 And from my eyes the teardrops rain ! 
 
 I have said enough, I think, about the 
 compositions of Villiers de 1'Isle Adam to 
 make musicians regret that his friend Cha- 
 brier would never take seriously the poet's 
 desire that he should endeavour to note down 
 some of his beautiful inspirations in writing. 
 But in all times musicians have been jealous 
 of their art, and are loath to admit that an out- 
 sider, ignorant of fugue and counterpoint, can 
 do any work worth listening to. As a general 
 rule they may be right. But Villiers was an 
 exception to all rules, and it is a pity that the
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 197 
 
 composer of " Gwendoline " did not recognize 
 that fad. 
 
 The passion for melody used to come upon 
 Villiers in regular crises, attacks of music 
 madness which lasted from a fortnight to 
 three weeks. During these periods he only 
 lived for counterpoint. The only great men, 
 for him, were Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and 
 Wagner. Everything he wrote referred to 
 music. Everything he did had music for its 
 end and aim. Every piano he came across in 
 his nightly wanderings served him to express 
 his devotion to the art. He only associated 
 with musicians and such musicians ! Oh, ye 
 gods ! My evenings at home were turned 
 into real splendid concerts, at which he was 
 at one and the same time conductor, orchestra, 
 accompanist, soloist, and critic ! As a pianist 
 he was far from attaining perfection his 
 fingering and time were both bad. As a 
 singer, his voice was unsteady, and often 
 broke ; but there was such fervour and fiery 
 enthusiasm and conviction in his delivery 
 and declamation, that in spite of his imper- 
 fections it was a deep delight to listen to him.
 
 198 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 It was during one of these fits of music 
 madness that he brought me a very odd 
 couple of musicians, brother and sister Cor- 
 sicans, called, I think, Olivetti. The man 
 was a sort of a thin sunburnt giant, with a 
 black stubbly beard, long neglected hair falling 
 over his shoulders, and the eyes of an incen- 
 diary. My Breton servant always locked 
 up the plate-box as soon as he arrived. 
 He was invariably dressed in velvet, brown, 
 ribbed velvet, very threadbare ; a huge red silk 
 scarf was rolled round and round his neck, and 
 he wore a soft grey felt hat, with an immense 
 brim, victoriously cocked on one side of his 
 head. Although a charming pianist, he was 
 almost starving. He was a member of the 
 " Internationale," and had been in trouble with 
 the Italian, Russian, and French police. He 
 had also been compromised during the Com- 
 mune, and was forced to hide and to live from 
 hand to mouth on a few ill-paid lessons and the 
 poor salary of an accompanist to the singers 
 in tenth-rate tea-gardens. His sister, Giulia, 
 was a handsome soft-eyed Italian ; she had 
 a pretty soprano voice and some musical
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 199 
 
 knowledge. Villiers made her sing Wagner, 
 which she hated, and it was irresistibly funny 
 to see and hear his bounds of rage, and angry 
 shouts of indignation, when she would persist in 
 warbling her Italian airs. Fortune has smiled 
 on the pretty Giulia. A few months after I 
 made her acquaintance she captivated and 
 married a Chicago gentleman who had made 
 a considerable pile of dollars by cutting up, 
 salting, and selling pigs. She now lives in 
 America. She took her brother there with 
 her, and I have no doubt that he is not quite 
 such an energetic Socialist now he has money 
 in his pocket. 
 
 Fortunately Villiers' musical acquaintances 
 did not all possess such a startlingly Bohe- 
 mian flavour. He owed to music a friend- 
 ship and an admiration which brightened the 
 whole of his intellectual life. His intimacy 
 with Richard Wagner was not only a source 
 of consolation and intellectual enjoyment to 
 him, it inspired some of his noblest thoughts 
 and some of the finest pages he ever wrote. 
 The example of that marvellous and mighty 
 genius, insulted, opposed, and scorned to his
 
 200 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 latest hour, without this flood of hatred and 
 injustice ever being- able to break down his 
 faith in his own prodigious powers, helped 
 Villiers to endure, on his part, the disdainful 
 smiles and indifference of his contemporaries, 
 strengthened him in his lofty disdain of those 
 well-beaten paths wherein mediocre intelli- 
 gences gather their quickly-fading laurels, and 
 fixed him immovably in his convictions and 
 his artistic faith. Though in my relation of 
 some facts concerning this friendship I speak 
 with veneration of Richard Wagner, I can no 
 longer hope to receive any blows in the good 
 cause. The author of "Tristan and Isolt" 
 is hallowed by fashion, and politicians no 
 longer dare to bring the ridiculous accusation of 
 lack of patriotism against his admirers. But 
 twenty years ago, and less, it was considered 
 the correct thing to run down Wagner's music 
 whether you were acquainted with it or not. 
 Nowadays no woman of fashion thinks her- 
 self complete if she does not fall into ecstasies 
 over the right places in " Lohengrin" and 
 " Tannhauser." Every self-respecting pianist 
 thumps the master's overtures, and all our
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 201 
 
 young girls study Elsa, and try to ape her 
 drooping and mystic postures. The outcast 
 of yesterday is the idol of to-day ! Well, God 
 be praised ! It is but the way of the world.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 First introduction of Wagner and Villiers at the house of 
 Charles Baudelaire Failure of " Tannhauser" at 
 the Paris Opera in 1861 Portrait and character of 
 Richard Wagner His friends and champions His 
 intimacy with Villiers Reminiscences of his youth 
 and early poverty Augusta Holmes Villiers' visit 
 to Triebchen The "Rheingold" at Munich Villiers 
 de 1'Isle Adam's artistic confession of faith. 
 
 T was, as I think I have already said, 
 at the house of Baudelaire in 1861, 
 that Villiers de 1'Isle Adam first 
 met Richard Wagner. This meet- 
 ing marks the date of what was, perhaps, the 
 bitterest moment in the stormy life of the 
 great composer. He secretly nursed a ran- 
 corous memory of these sufferings, and, after 
 the war, his unworthy and undignified abuse 
 of Paris betrayed the feeling. By dint of
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 203 
 
 hard work and patience, combined with his 
 genius, he had forced Germany to receive 
 and recognize him as a master in his genera- 
 tion. But he was determined to have the 
 approval of Paris also, and offered " Tann- 
 hauser" to the Imperial Academy of Music. 
 The history of his failure, complete, crushing, 
 almost unique in theatrical history, is known 
 to all. Wagner's was one of those strange 
 individualities to which nobody could be in- 
 different ; he must rouse either blind admira- 
 tion or violent hatred, and he roused, alas ! 
 more hatred than devotion. The chorus of 
 evil-speaking, abuse, and scorn, which rose 
 from every side after the performance of his 
 work in Paris, would have broken down any 
 other man ; but, unlike most others, the great 
 German master was never so much in his 
 element as in a desperate fight. It seemed to 
 endow him with fresh strength and redoubled 
 scorn, and he generally replied to each torrent 
 of abuse by some proud defiance thrown in 
 the teeth of the tastes, the conventionality, 
 the prejudices, and the jealousies of the day. 
 At this moment, then, when Wagner was
 
 204 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 shining with all the light of his indomitable 
 determination, Villiers, young and enthusiastic 
 as he was, met him for the first time. This 
 interview never faded from his recollection. 
 Richard Wagner, with his high, remarkable 
 forehead, almost terrifying in its development, 
 his deep blue eyes, with their slow, steady, 
 magnetic glance, his thin, strongly-marked 
 features, changing from one shade of pallor 
 to another, his imperious-looking hooked nose, 
 his delicate, thin-lipped, unsatisfied, ironical 
 mouth, his exceedingly strong projecting and 
 pointed chin, seemed to the poet like the 
 archangel of celestial combat. And on his 
 side, in those hours of bitterness, the soul of 
 the great musician must have been strongly 
 drawn towards those few select spirits, who, 
 in spite of adverse clamour, boldly took up 
 his quarrel and defended and admired him. 
 His strong friendship with Catulle Mendes, 
 Baudelaire, Villiers, and a few others, dated 
 from this epoch ; but similarity of tastes, and a 
 way of looking at dreams and reality, men 
 and things, identical with the other's, specially 
 attracted the young poet and the already
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 205 
 
 grey-haired musician towards each other. 
 They were, besides, united by a common 
 passion for midnight walks. Wandering about, 
 careless of weather, hour, or locality, through 
 the mysterious sleeping streets of Paris, the 
 two friends seldom separated before the dawn. 
 Once, as they went down a long dreary street 
 which ends at the Quai Saint Eustache, Wag- 
 ner suddenly pointed, with a tragic gesture, to 
 the window of a garret at the very top of a 
 high house. There it was that he had really 
 despaired ; there he had almost died of 
 hunger, had meditated suicide, and there, too, 
 in the midst of the blackest poverty, he had 
 written one of his most powerful and poetic 
 works. He told Villiers, in that French 
 stuffed with Teutonisms which made his 
 conversation so odd-sounding, all the extra- 
 ordinary adventures of his youth in Paris : 
 how, towards 1839, impelled by destiny, 
 he suddenly left Riga, in the theatre of 
 which town he conducted the orchestra, and 
 embarked on a sailing-ship which was going to 
 London, intending to go thence to Paris. A 
 fearful storm wrecked the vessel on the Nor-
 
 206 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 wegian coast ; but Wagner did not lose courage, 
 and reached the end of his journey. Almost 
 unknown as he was, and in a most precarious 
 pecuniary position, he saw the doors of the 
 Parisian theatres scornfully shut in his face. 
 Spurred by necessity, he tried to write ballads 
 for the concerts, but, alas ! he was not the man 
 to write French romances, and his efforts only 
 aroused derision. To be brief, hidden in that 
 garret, like a fox buried in his lair, penniless, 
 starving, he was meditating suicide, when a 
 musical publisher came and proposed to him 
 to arrange some operatic airs for the cornet a 
 piston; and so the cornet a piston was the 
 instrument of Richard Wagner's salvation ! 
 Living with the utmost economy, he con- 
 trived, by the end of a year of unexampled 
 privation, to get together the necessary sum 
 for hiring a piano. " I trembled in every 
 limb," he said to Villiers, " when I first ran 
 my fingers over the keys, but I soon found, to 
 my exquisite joy, that I was still a musician." 
 And now the muse of inspiration poured 
 out upon him the fulness of her riches. The 
 memory of the shipwreck in which he had so
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 207 
 
 lately shared, of the sea as he had seen it 
 under the awful flashes of the tempest, the 
 deep fiords, the bluff promontories, haunted 
 his imagination ; then suddenly he saw, flying 
 across the foggy Scandinavian sea swift as an 
 arrow, illuminated by a dazzling lightning flash, 
 the dreary ship of that legendary hero, " The 
 Flying Dutchman." And in the bare, cold, 
 Parisian garret, Richard Wagner, indifferent 
 now to all physical suffering, alone with his 
 genius, and with his shabby, hired piano, com- 
 posed and wrote that splendid lyric poem which 
 he christened " Der Fliegende Hollander." 
 
 But if I was to give way to the temptation 
 of recalling all Villiers' conversations concern- 
 ing his great and musically-gifted friend, 
 another volume would have to be grafted on 
 to this one of my recollections of himself. 
 Never, indeed, was the author of " Axel " 
 more eloquent, and indeed prolix, than when 
 his theme was Richard Wagner. One felt 
 that a part of the soul of the master had 
 literally entered his ; and when he para- 
 phrased in words some one of his works, he 
 gave you, so to speak, an illusion of music.
 
 208 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 In the fine book which Catulle Mendes has 
 dedicated to the glory of the German maestro, 
 he relates that Villiers had written down one 
 of these paraphrases, I think the one of the 
 prelude to " Lohengrin." I do not think it has 
 ever been published I have never been able 
 to come upon it. If the former director of the 
 " Revue Fantaisiste " has the work of his late 
 comrade in his possession, and can be induced 
 to publish it, he will deserve the gratitude of 
 all lovers of literature. 
 
 Such was Villiers' passionate cultus for 
 Wagner, that, in spite of all his poverty, I 
 might say penury, he would contrive to make 
 long journeys into Switzerland and Germany 
 in order to enjoy the company, the conversa- 
 tion, and the music of the author of " Tristan 
 and Isolt." During one of these distant ex- 
 peditions to Triebchen, near Lucerne, he came 
 upon a young girl whom he had already met 
 in Paris, and whose splendid talents, now well 
 known and uncontested, he had been among 
 the first to recognize and applaud I refer to 
 Mdlle. Augusta Holmes. Villiers was en- 
 raptured at once with this young and beautiful
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 209 
 
 artist, admirably gifted, filled with sacred fire, 
 ready to make any sacrifice on the altar of art, 
 and making light, in her sturdy confidence, of 
 the thousand obstacles which bar a woman's 
 entrance into the road to glory. Long after- 
 wards, in 1885, the great writer, in a charm- 
 ing article, written in an enthusiastic and 
 stirring strain, detailed his recollections of 
 his intercourse with the young musician. I 
 quote two passages from it. I must premise 
 that Villiers saw her for the first time at 
 Versailles, in the house of her father, Mr. 
 Dalkeith Holmes, in the Rue de 1'Orangerie, 
 whither he had been carried off rather against 
 the grain, by M. Camille Saint Saens, who 
 was his companion that day : 
 
 " That evening, we heard some oriental 
 melodies, the earliest musical thoughts of the 
 future authoress of 'Les Argonautes,' 'Lutece,' 
 ' Irelande,' and 'Pologne,' and which seemed 
 to me to be already almost free from the 
 conventionalities of the old style of music. 
 
 " Augusta Holmes had one of those in- 
 telligent voices which can adapt itself to any 
 register and indicate the most delicate shades 
 
 p
 
 210 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 of a musical work. I am generally inclined 
 to mistrust those cleverly-managed organs, 
 which often (to the appreciation of an un- 
 initiated audience) immensely heighten the 
 value of a commonplace composition. But 
 in this case the air was worthy of the accent, 
 and I was enchanted with the ' Sirene,' the 
 ' Chanson du Chamelier/ and the ' Pays 
 des Reves,' not to mention the * Hymne 
 Irlandais/ which the young composer inter- 
 preted so that pine-encircled glades and 
 distant heaths rose before our mind's eye. It 
 was altogether a bright spot, musically speak- 
 ing, pointing to an inevitably brilliant future. 
 The evening ended with some passages from 
 Wagner's ' Lohengrin,' lately published in 
 France, and to which Saint Saens introduced 
 us. The young composer was passionately 
 smitten with the new music, and her admira- 
 tion for the author of ' Tristan and Isolt ' has 
 never since belied itself." 
 
 Here is the account of the meeting at 
 Triebchen : " Two months before the Ger- 
 man war I met Mdlle. Holmes at Triebchen, 
 near Lucerne, in Richard Wagner's own
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 211 
 
 house ; her father having, in spite of his great 
 age, decided to take the journey to Munich, 
 in order that the young composer might hear 
 the first part of the ' Nibelungenlied.' 
 
 "'A little less sentiment for my wishes, 
 mademoiselle ! ' said Wagner, after he had 
 listened to her with the clear-sighted and 
 prophetic attention of genius. 'I do not 
 want to be, to a creative genius like yours, 
 the manchineel-tree whose shadow stifles all 
 the birds that come within it. A word of 
 advice ! Do not belong to any school espe- 
 cially not to mine ! ' 
 
 " Richard Wagner did not wish the ' Rhein- 
 gold' to be played at Munich. Although 
 the score had been published, he objected to 
 the work being seen apart from the three 
 other portions of the ' Nibelungenlied.' His 
 great dream, ultimately realized at Bayreuth, 
 was to give a representation lasting four 
 successive evenings, of this, the great work 
 of his life. But the impatience of his young 
 and fanatical admirer, the King of Bavaria, 
 had broken all bounds, and the ' Rheingold ' 
 was to be played by ' royal command.' Wag-
 
 212 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 ner, who had refused all participation and all 
 assistance, anxious and saddened by the way 
 in which the unity of his great masterpiece 
 was about to be destroyed, had forbidden 
 any friend of his to attend the performance. 
 And many musicians and men of letters, 
 amongst them myself, who had twice travelled 
 to Germany to hear the master's music, 
 hardly knew whether to obey his distressing 
 injunction or not. 
 
 " ' I shall look upon anybody who coun- 
 tenances that massacre, as my personal 
 enemy,' he said to us. 
 
 " Mdlle. Holmes, although driven into sub- 
 mission by the threat, was reduced to despair ! 
 
 " However, the letter of Kapellmeister 
 Hans Richter, who was conducting the 
 orchestra at Munich, having somewhat re- 
 assured Wagner, his resentment against the 
 passionate zealots of his music softened, and 
 we took advantage of the momentary calm 
 to depart, almost on the sly. 
 
 " I have before me as I write a letter, and 
 rather a bitter one, which Wagner wrote 
 me to Munich, and in which he says, 'So
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 213 
 
 you have gone with your friends to see how 
 people can toy with a serious work well ! 
 well ! I count on some inexterminable pas- 
 sages in it, to atone for much that might 
 appear incomprehensible ! ' 
 
 " The predictions of the master were falsi- 
 fied by the brilliant triumph of the ' Rhein- 
 gold ' a triumph more foreseen than actually 
 apparent, for this opera is only fully in- 
 telligible when seen in conjunction with the 
 three other portions of the ' Nibelungenlied,' 
 of which it is the key. All his adherents 
 were present at the performance, in spite of 
 his threats and prohibitions, and I remember 
 seeing that night, in the first row of the 
 visitors' gallery, Mdlle. Holmes, sitting next 
 to the Abbe Liszt, and following the render- 
 ing of the opera in the orchestral score- 
 book belonging to the illustrious musician " 
 ("Vie Moderne," Paris, 1885). 
 
 Need I add that Villiers was one of the 
 first Frenchmen to hurry to Bayreuth in 
 1876, when, thanks to the sumptuous munifi- 
 cence of the King of Bavaria, Richard Wag- 
 ner was able at last to realize his great dream.
 
 2i 4 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 I should like to close this veracious chro- 
 nicle of the fraternal relations which existed 
 between the great German master and the 
 great French thinker, by quoting a page or 
 two written by Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, which, 
 though almost unknown to scholars, would 
 nevertheless be worthy in every way to 
 become the fitting preface of his collected 
 works. Villiers, in a purely imaginary con- 
 versation, put into the mouth of the beloved 
 master, has summed up all his own artistic 
 and religious convictions. 
 
 When we consider how hard and miserable 
 was the life of him who poured out his soul 
 and his conscience in this magnificent con- 
 fession of an artist's faith, we can hardly 
 read it without deep emotion. 
 
 " One twilight evening we were sitting in 
 the darkening room looking over the garden, 
 the rare words we interchanged, with long 
 spaces of silence between them, scarcely dis- 
 turbing our pleasing meditations, when I 
 asked Wagner, without useless perambula- 
 tion, whether it was, so to speak, artificially 
 (by dint of science and intellectual power),
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 215 
 
 that he had succeeded in investing his works, 
 ' Rienzi,' ' Tannhauser/ ' Lohengrin,' ' The 
 Flying Dutchman,' even the ' Meistersinger ' 
 and ' Parsifal,' over which he was already 
 brooding, with that strongly mystic quality 
 which emanates from them all ? Whether, 
 in short, he had been sufficiently freethinking 
 and independent of conscience to be no more 
 of a Christian than the subject of these lyric 
 dramas demanded of him ; and, finally, whether 
 he looked at Christianity in the same light 
 as that in which he viewed those Scandi- 
 navian myths, the symbolism of which he 
 had so magnificently illustrated in the Nibe- 
 lungen Ring. This question was almost 
 authorized, indeed, by something which had 
 struck me very much in one of his principal 
 operas, ' Tristan and Isolt,' viz., that in 
 that work, in which the most intense pas- 
 sionate love is scornfully ascribed to the 
 influence of a love philtre, the name of God 
 is never mentioned a single time. 
 
 " I shall always remember the look Wag- 
 ner fixed on me out of the depths of his 
 wonderful eyes. ' Why,' he said with a smile,
 
 zi6 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 ' if I did not feel in my inmost soul the 
 living light and love of that Christian faith 
 of which you speak, my works, which all 
 bear witness to it, and in which I have in- 
 corporated all my mental powers, as well as 
 the whole of my lifetime, would be the works 
 of a liar, of an ape ! How could I be childish 
 enough to work myself up into a frenzy 
 about what at bottom I should know to be 
 an imposture ? My art is my prayer ; and, 
 believe me, no true artist can sing otherwise 
 than as he believes, speak but of what he 
 loves, write otherwise than as he thinks. 
 Those who lie, betray it in their work, which 
 thenceforth becomes sterile and valueless, 
 for no true work of art can be accomplished 
 without disinterestedness and sincerity. 
 
 " ' Yes ! he who for the sake of some low 
 interests, for success, or for money, tries to 
 make a fictitious faith stir in a so-called work 
 of art, betrays himself, and only brings forth 
 a corpse. Should such a traitor pronounce 
 the name of God, not only does that name 
 not signify to the listener what he who pro- 
 nounces it would have it mean, but being,
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 217 
 
 as it is, a word, and therefore a living thing, 
 it gives, by his supreme profanation, the lie 
 to him who utters it. No human being can 
 be deceived by such a device, and the author 
 of it can only be valued at his proper worth 
 by those of his own genus, who recognize in 
 his want of truth that which they are them- 
 selves. 
 
 " ' The first sign that marks the real artist 
 is a burning, precise, sacred, unalterable faith ; 
 for in every artistic production worthy of 
 a human being, the artistic value and the 
 living value are blended together, in the dual 
 unity of the body and the soul. The work 
 of a man without faith can never be the 
 work of an artist, because it will always lack 
 that living flame which raises, enraptures, fills, 
 warms, and fortifies the soul. It will always 
 be like a corpse, galvanized into life by some 
 trivial machine. At the same time let this be 
 clearly understood: if, on the one hand, Know- 
 ledge alone can only produce clever amateurs, 
 great inventors of "methods," of modes of 
 action, of expressions, more or less consum- 
 mately skilful in the manufacture of their
 
 218 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 mosaics, and also shameless plagiarists, who, 
 to put one off the scent, will assimilate 
 millions of incongruous sparks of intelligence, 
 which lose their brightness when they re- 
 appear out of the tinselled emptiness of such 
 minds, on the other hand, Faith alone can 
 only produce and give vent to those sublime 
 cries of the soul which, because they cannot 
 properly formulate themselves, appear, alas ! 
 to the vulgar, to be but incoherent clamour. 
 The true artist, he who can create, and put 
 together, and transfigure his ideas, needs 
 these two great gifts indissolubly united, 
 Knowledge and Faith. As for myself, since 
 you ask me, above all things I am a Christian, 
 and the accents which touch you in my work 
 owe their inspiration to that alone.' '
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The marquis and the marquise Villiers' filial tender- 
 ness A monomania for speculation A letter from 
 the marquis Villiers' contributions to thepress The 
 " Figaro " " La Republique des Lettres " Catulle 
 Mendes J. K. Huysmans The "Contes Cruels" 
 Two quotations Villiers' high spirits His loss of 
 illusion A study by M. G. Guiches Villiers as a 
 talker and a mimic Some unpublished traits of Dr. 
 Triboulat Bonhomet Bonhomet the commander-in- 
 chief Bonhomet the ermine-hunter Bonhomet ful- 
 filling the letter of the Scriptures Bonhomet's true 
 adventures at Bayreuth The political opinions of Vil- 
 liers de 1'Isle Adam An unexpected toast A rupture. 
 
 E AN WHILE, lost in a poor and 
 remote quarter of Paris, leading 
 a lonely existence made up of priva- 
 tion and sacrifices, a frail old lady 
 lived on, supported and consoled by her great 
 love for her Matthias. Yes, the old marquis 
 and marquise were still in the land of the
 
 220 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 living. Poverty, age, and suffering, cold and 
 hunger, had not succeeded in putting out 
 their feeble lamp. The marquise, as I have 
 said, only lived for and in her son, and she 
 bravely endured the cruellest trials, rinding her 
 buckler against all ills and her consolation in 
 all her sorrows in the worship and tenderness 
 of her boy. Villiers was more than a good 
 son he was an admirable son. I think he 
 poured out all the treasures of tenderness 
 which were garnered in that great heart of his 
 upon his mother. When he spoke of his 
 parents, especially of her (he never did 
 mention them except to his closest intimates, 
 and those gentlemen of the boulevards never 
 heard him profane the sacred name of father 
 or of mother in their company), the tears 
 would come into his eyes. The moment his 
 pen brought him in any money, he would tear 
 off to the Avenue Malakoff (where the old 
 people inhabited two modest rooms), to share 
 his earnings with them, and would return 
 from such expeditions with a radiant face. 
 Nevertheless, the marquis used to cause him 
 some considerable trouble. Time, far from
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 221 
 
 calming the old nobleman's mania for specula- 
 tion, had only intensified it. Age and infir- 
 mity had not diminished his activity, and he 
 walked the streets from morning till night on 
 the look-out for wonderful opportunities. No- 
 body, luckily, paid him much attention, but he 
 would try to insist on whirling Matthias away 
 with him, and making him share in the execu- 
 tion of the extraordinary plans he used to pro- 
 pound daily. Hence arose occasional and 
 lively discussions, which ended in a hearty 
 laugh on Villiers' part, and the indignant 
 retirement of his father, who would exclaim, 
 " Well, in spite of all your talent, Matthias, you 
 will never be anything but an empty dream ! " 
 The old marquis kept his dreams and visions 
 as long as he lived. The very year of his 
 death he wrote his son the following letter, 
 which depicts the extraordinary state of this 
 astonishing visionary's mind better than the 
 longest psychological study : 
 
 V, 1883. 
 
 " MY DEAR MATTHIAS, 
 
 " We desire to make known our good
 
 222 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 fortune to you. I hereby introduce to you, 
 
 Mr. L , who is at this moment the 
 
 possessor of 25,000 francs, and who, at this 
 time of writing, owns a well-furnished dining- 
 room, and who is about to furnish his recep- 
 tion rooms with splendid pink satin curtains 
 (which I have had in my hands), also a good 
 piano, a superior sofa, and furniture to match. 
 Besides this, he will have a beautiful country 
 place, with a magnificent feudal residence 
 with turrets, a park, fields, meadows, and 
 vineyards, and several leagues of forest, 
 wherein we shall be able to exercise our 
 prowess as sportsmen. And we shall own 
 (in a perfectly regular manner) some mines, 
 the riches of which I expect you to help me to 
 work, with our own capital. 
 
 "Your father, 
 "JOSEPH DE VILLIERS DE L'!SLE ADAM." 
 
 This period of Villiers' life, although the 
 necessary investigations for the writing of 
 "L'Eve Future" absorbed him very much, was 
 exceedingly productive, and his literary noto- 
 riety enabled him to place his copy very easily.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 223 
 
 He contributed tales to several daily papers 
 which piqued themselves on their literary 
 columns. The " Figaro," which, to its honour 
 be it said, always liked and appreciated him, 
 used to receive his work with deference. But 
 his most active collaboration was given to a 
 new magazine, " La Republique des Lettres," 
 a publication too purely artistic to have any 
 chance of longevity in this matter-of-fact 
 century. In the office of the " Republique 
 des Lettres" he found many of the friends of 
 his earlier days, who had rallied round the 
 former director of the " Revue Fantaisiste," 
 Catulle Mendes. Like himself these artists 
 were all growing old and grey in the heavy 
 harness of life and thought. All of them had 
 lost the greater part of their illusions, but all 
 had preserved intact their sacred and coura- 
 geous love of the ideal and the beautiful, and 
 their indignant horror of empty platitudes. 
 To this well-trained phalanx some youthful 
 spirits had joined themselves, and here De 
 1'Isle Adam laid the foundation of his friend- 
 ship with a young writer of special and original 
 talent, J. K. Huysmans. This acquaintance
 
 224 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 was to ripen, some years later, into a deep, 
 tender, manly affection. Providence had 
 marked out the now justly celebrated author 
 of " A Rebours," and so many other deep 
 and clever works, to soften by his presence 
 and his delicate strong-heartedness the cruel 
 death-agony of the poet. I shall return later 
 to the subject of this intimacy. 
 
 Villiers also busied himself with collect- 
 ing his scattered tales into a volume called 
 " Contes Cruels," which, published the following 
 year by Calmann Levy, set the seal upon his 
 reputation as a great artist. This work, 
 better perhaps than any other, shows the 
 author's complex, original, and many-sided 
 talent. His symbolism is magnificently exem- 
 plified in such pieces of writing as " Impatience 
 de la Foule " and " Vox Populi ; " his mysticism 
 shines brilliantly in "Vera;" his deep and 
 bitter sense of philosophical raillery produces 
 those strangely attractive, almost prophetic 
 tales, " La Machine a Gloire," " L'Affichage 
 Celeste," " L'Etna chez soi," to which last the 
 recent anarchical struggles in Paris give a 
 striking reality. And in those brilliant pages
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 225 
 
 of " L'Annonciateur," which even one fresh 
 from the perusal of Gustave Flaubert's " He- 
 rodias " must needs read with profound emo- 
 tion, the poet and the idealist pours forth all 
 the overflowing wealth of his imagination. 
 It was concerning " L'Annonciateur" that its 
 author wrote : " If I think great thoughts, 
 people will say that what I write is fine litera- 
 ture ; yet it is but the clear expression of my 
 thought, and not literature at all ; for that has 
 no real existence, beyond being the clear ex- 
 pression of what I think." 
 
 He has elsewhere described his own idio- 
 syncrasy, and his destiny as an artist and a 
 thinker, in these remarkable and sadly sym- 
 bolic terms : " Alas ! we are like some mighty 
 crystal vase of Eastern story, filled with the 
 pure essence of dead roses, and hermetically 
 enveloped in a triple covering of wax, of gold, 
 and of parchment. One single drop of the 
 essence thus preserved within the precious 
 urn (the fortune of a whole race, handed 
 down by inheritance as a sacred charge, 
 hallowed by the ancestral blessings), suffices 
 to perfume many vessels of pure water, which 
 
 Q
 
 226 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 in their turn will embalm the air of the tomb 
 or dwelling wherein they are set, for many a 
 year. But (and herein lies our crime) we do 
 not resemble those other jars filled with com- 
 moner perfume, scentless and melancholy phials 
 not worth reclosing, whose virtue weakens and 
 melts away under every passing breath." It 
 would be wrong to imagine Villiers as a sple- 
 netic and silent person in everyday life, not- 
 withstanding the bitterness of his irony and 
 his immense range of thought. He was gifted, 
 on the contrary, with a robust cheerfulness, 
 never more apparent than when he was 
 struggling with difficulty. In the early days 
 of his Paris life, he had given rein, in all 
 companies, to that enjoyment of the fact of 
 living which expressed itself in his case by an 
 overflow of wit and humour. But he soon 
 perceived, alas ! that the raptures of his audi- 
 ence were not disinterested. When these 
 literary good fellows saw De 1'Isle Adam 
 coming, they would get out their note- 
 books, and his sayings, his ideas for stories, 
 his humorous fancies, were all carefully 
 collected by these skimmers of the literary
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 227 
 
 pot. So that the poor poet, opening a news- 
 paper or magazine at random, would find his 
 own ideas and creations shamefully travestied 
 and mutilated, and impudently signed with 
 names which bore no resemblance to his 
 own. 
 
 These underhand thefts, and many another 
 mean treachery, poisoned a naturally sincere 
 and simple nature. M. G. Guiches has very 
 happily reproduced the change which took 
 place in the poet's heart, actually affecting 
 even his physical appearance, in a remark- 
 able study of Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, published 
 in the " Nouvelle Revue," May, 1890. 
 
 " When he at last became aware of this 
 pilfering," says M. Guiches, " when he under- 
 stood the interested object of the raptures 
 which used to encourage his ready tongue, 
 there was a sudden reaction within him. His 
 soul, naturally as open as the day, shrank 
 within itself, his ingenuousness intrenched 
 itself behind a distrust as excessive as his 
 simplicity had once been. His speech grew 
 hesitating, shorn of its former frank uncon- 
 strainedness. Sudden flashes of suspicion filled
 
 228 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 his eyes with sudden shyness. His hand was 
 no longer outstretched ; it waited yours, and 
 was only offered with the indolence bred of 
 disenchantment." 
 
 But when Villiers was far from the boule- 
 vard, far from professional literary men, 
 when he was warmed and revived in an atmo- 
 sphere of sincere friendship and admiration, 
 he became himself again, and his dazzling 
 gaiety poured itself forth in all sorts of un- 
 expecled conceits. It was like a perpetual 
 show of fireworks, and the supply of squibs 
 and crackers, Bengal lights and Roman 
 candles, used to seem inexhaustible. 
 
 He was not only a good story-teller, he 
 could mimic like a great and original aclor, 
 and he thus gave the innumerable personages 
 created by his imagination an air of genuine, 
 if often fantastic reality, simulating, as he 
 would, their looks and voices, their gestures 
 and their attitudes. Amongst all these crea- 
 tions, which seem as if they belong to the 
 dreams of Hoffman, Edgar Poe, or Dean 
 Swift, Villiers' favourite was always the illus- 
 trious Triboulat Bonhomet, " the son of little
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 229 
 
 Dr. Amour Bonhomet, who had adventures 
 down in the coal mines." 
 
 During many a delightful evening, and in 
 the course of those long midnight rambles 
 through Paris which used to pass so quickly 
 away in his company, I have witnessed many 
 of the metamorphoses of that remarkable and 
 scientific individual. For Bonhomet, accord- 
 ing to his creator's notion, was, while always 
 continuing the archetype of his century, to 
 be reincarnated in every position a man could 
 occupy. He was to be, turn about, professor, 
 minister of state, police agent, philosopher, 
 explorer, and lecturer. I remember some of 
 these transmigrations, which were never pub- 
 lished, Villiers having been prevented by 
 death from putting them into circulation. 
 
 First of all, there is a General Bonhomet, 
 commanding-in- chief, who harangues his 
 troops before the battle. He points out to 
 them that the idea of glory and patriotism is 
 quite out of date, and calls upon them to court 
 death in defence of agriculture, manufactures, 
 and commerce, the three sources of the pros- 
 perity of France. " Soldiers ! let us have no
 
 2 3 o VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 more empty enthusiasm for hollow and ex- 
 ploded Utopias ! Fight, conquer, and die for 
 the safety of our railway system ! " 
 
 Then, as a pendant to Bonhomet the slayer 
 of swans, there was Bonhomet the ermine- 
 hunter, who, having read that one of these 
 immaculate creatures dies as soon as a stain 
 marks its snowy whiteness, hides himself with 
 a wonderful silent gun, charged with ink, and 
 thus exterminates several dozen ! 
 
 But the boldest conception of all is, perhaps, 
 Bonhomet the religious man. 
 
 After a visit to Patmos, the details of which 
 beggar all description, the doctor determines 
 to fulfil the letter of the Scriptures, " that there 
 shall not remain of Jerusalem one stone upon 
 another." And having observed, as he passed 
 through the holy places, that arches, walls, and 
 houses were still standing, he returns to Jeru- 
 salem, accompanied by a contractor and an 
 army of workmen, to accomplish the scriptural 
 prophecy to the letter, and leave no stone upon 
 its neighbour ! I must not bid a final farewell 
 to the doctor without detailing an authentic 
 but little known anecdote, in which he plays
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 231 
 
 the chief part. During the autumn of 1 8 79, 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, together with Judith 
 Gautier, Catulle Mendes, and many other 
 musical adepts, had gone to Bayreuth to see 
 the divine Wagner, and assist at the per- 
 formance of " Parsifal " and the " Nibe- 
 lungenlied." The great master, who was all 
 powerful at the Bavarian Court, presented 
 Villiers to the king and his august guests, 
 among whom was that Grand Duke who is 
 now Czar of all the Russias. Wagner had 
 talked so often about Triboulat Bonhomet 
 that, willy nilly, the poet had to agree to give 
 a reading from his works. For this purpose 
 the whole court was assembled. 
 
 From the outset there was a murmur of 
 stifled laughter and a rustle of unfurling fans. 
 As the reading proceeded, the gaiety of the 
 audience increased, growing quite noisy, and 
 unchecked by the presence of the king, who, 
 for that matter, laughed louder than the rest. 
 Villiers was much astonished, and a little un- 
 easy even, at this extraordinary hilarity. He 
 knew well enough that his Bonhomet had a 
 very comic side, but he never expected to
 
 232 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 raise such a gust of merriment among per- 
 sonages so grave and important. At last the 
 tempest of laughter rose so high that the 
 reader ceased and cast a glance, full of vague 
 suspicion, round his audience. The Grand 
 Duke of Saxe -Weimar, who sat beside him, 
 touched his shoulder, and pointed to a person 
 sitting just opposite them. Villiers, with a 
 little sharp cry, dropped the manuscript from 
 his trembling fingers, and gave evident signs 
 of lively terror. There, in front of him, sur- 
 rounded by a bevy of beautiful women, gazing 
 at him with shining eyes, his enormous mouth 
 open in stentorian laughter, his huge hands 
 leading the applause, was Dr. Triboulat Bon- 
 homet himself, in flesh and bone (principally 
 bone !). It was Liszt ! From the very first 
 line of the manuscript, which minutely de- 
 scribed the doclor, the whole audience had 
 been struck with the resemblance between 
 the great pianist and Triboulat Bonhomet, 
 and as the description went on the likeness 
 increased dress, gestures, habits, all bore a 
 striking similarity. One person alone did not 
 perceive the identity, and he laughed louder
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 233 
 
 than the rest Liszt himself. As the situation 
 worked itself out, the fits of laughter became 
 almost convulsing, for Villiers read on with 
 
 o' 
 
 the most imperturbable gravity. After this 
 incident quelgiornopiu nonsileggemmoavante!* 
 
 I have spoken but little, up till now, of the 
 political convictions of the author of the 
 " Contes Cruels." The truth is, that though 
 he was Royalist by racial instinct and Catho- 
 lic by conviction, he considered contemporary 
 politics, in the depth of his heart, as a low and 
 vulgar science, the triumph of lying, hypocrisy 
 and platitude, and an end unworthy of the pur- 
 suit of minds inspired by the divine breath. 
 Nevertheless, during his short career as editor 
 of " La Croix et 1'Epee," he constituted him- 
 self the champion of the cause of the Naun- 
 dorffs. I fancy that the strange mystery 
 which even now surrounds the origin of his 
 claim, fired the poet's imagination more than 
 the personal qualities of the starveling pre- 
 tender. 
 
 He remained a Naundorfnst even after he 
 
 1 "That day no further leaf we did uncover." Inferno, 
 canto v.
 
 234 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 was no longer at the head of the newspaper, 
 and was convinced of the incontestability of the 
 claims of the future Charles XI. to the throne 
 of France. Let no one hastily conclude that 
 this was nothing but his fancy. More serious 
 persons than Villiers, after minute research, 
 have shared his conviclions on this head. 
 Jules Favre, who defended the pretensions of 
 the Naundorffs before the French tribunals, 
 was persuaded of the rightfulness of his 
 clients' claim. Since that time much evi- 
 dence has come to light, the authenticity of 
 which it would be hard to disprove, showing 
 that at all events Louis XVII. did not die 
 in the Temple. The Comte d'Herisson, in a 
 curious book published some years ago, and 
 called " Le Cabinet Noir," has elucidated all 
 this strange affair very clearly, and a perusal 
 of his work, supported as it is by documentary 
 evidence, is calculated to inspire doubt as to 
 the rival pretensions of the two branches of 
 the Bourbon family in the most incredulous 
 and sceptical minds. 1 
 
 1 Since the publication of the Comte d'Herisson's book, 
 another has appeared on this knotty point, " L'Enfant du
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 235 
 
 However that may be, Villiers was still, in 
 1879, an enthusiastic partisan of the Naun- 
 dorffs, when an incident which took place that 
 year completely separated them. 
 
 A few faithful followers of the monarch in 
 expectancy had joined together to give a 
 dinner in his honour. Villiers was sitting, 
 silent and absorbed, on the prince's right. 
 Among the guests was the old Comte de 
 
 F , who for forty years had devoted 
 
 everything intellect, energy, time, and for- 
 tune to the welfare and success of him whom 
 he looked upon as his legitimate sovereign. 
 The august guest lost his temper (on what 
 account I know not) with his old and faithful 
 servant, and, before all the assembled com- 
 pany, he so overwhelmed him with reproaches 
 and abuse that the poor old man burst into 
 sobs. A stupor of indignant astonishment 
 fell upon the little gathering ; and in the 
 midst of the general silence, Villiers rose, 
 
 Temple," by the Baron de Gaugler, published by Savine. 
 An authoritative work, proving the right of the Naundorffs 
 to style themselves the descendants of the Dauphin of 
 France.
 
 236 
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 glass in hand, and turned towards the prince. 
 "Sire!" he said, "I drink your majesty's 
 health. Your claims are certainly beyond 
 dispute. You have all the ingratitude of a 
 king!"
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Fragments of a journal kept in 1879 A woman of 
 fashion bewitched Villiers and Mar' Yvonne A 
 mystery Villiers a candidate at the elections of 
 the Conseil General Opinions of the press 
 Meetings The plans of the future councillor 
 My departure from Paris Our separation Descrip- 
 tion of Villiers in 1880 by G. Guiches. 
 
 UN TING through old papers for 
 any traces I might possess of the 
 dear dead friend whose life I am 
 endeavouring to relate, I have 
 come across several sheets of notes, written 
 about this time, towards the end of 1879. 
 This journal is full of Villiers, with whom 
 I was living in almost daily intercourse, 
 and though it may be devoid of any other 
 merit, it has at all events this one, that it 
 was drawn from the life, and that it faithfully 
 reproduces my original impressions. From
 
 238 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 it, therefore, I cull the story of one of the 
 last incidents in the poet's Parisian life of 
 which I was a witness. The reader will, I 
 am sure, forgive my endeavouring to vary 
 the monotony of my tale by the quotation : 
 
 "October, 1879. Matthias has been back 
 from Bayreuth for some days, and gave me 
 only yesterday an exemplification of the extra- 
 ordinary bewitching power of his conversa- 
 tion over every human being who hears it. 
 A distant relation of my own, young, charm- 
 ing, elegant, and deplorably frivolous, is just 
 now passing through Paris. She has come 
 to make some purchases, to buy a trousseau, 
 and I really believe her sole mission in life 
 is to match ribbons and silks. God alone 
 knows what is inside the head of a young 
 and fashionable woman coming to Paris, with 
 a pocketful of money, to ' do her shopping ! ' 
 It appears to me that nothing exists for her 
 beyond shops, milliners, dressmakers, lace 
 vendors, jewellers, and so forth. Yesterday, 
 
 however, Madame de X was good enough 
 
 to come to my house to rest a moment, and 
 talk about our own part of the country.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 239 
 
 But she had shown me her list of engage- 
 ments, and made her conditions beforehand. 
 Half an hour by the clock, neither more nor 
 less, she was to spend with me. Towards 
 half-past two, that is, after the first quarter 
 of an hour, in came Matthias, with whom she 
 had not been previously acquainted. . . . 
 Well ! when Mar' Yvonne, my Breton servant, 
 brought in the lamp at six o'clock, my 
 charming cousin was still sitting on the sofa, 
 gazing admiringly at Villiers, who, standing 
 in the middle of the room, was demonstrating 
 to her, with unutterably comic gestures, how 
 the King of Bavaria valsed! Who can tell 
 how the miracle was accomplished ? These 
 performances of his beggar all description ; 
 they must be seen to be realized. During 
 yesterday afternoon Villiers played the piano, 
 sang, and acted through the whole of the Nibe- 
 lungen trilogy, interspersing his performance 
 with queer stories, vile puns, astonishing 
 reflections, and bitter jests. He imitated one 
 after the other, and with astonishing power, 
 all the august, illustrious, and crackbrained 
 people he had met at Bayreuth, from the
 
 240 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 king and the princesses down to the crazy- 
 looking musical professors from the German 
 universities. He gave us a magnificent 
 description of the way in which the impetuous 
 and tyrannical maestro, Wagner, ruled the 
 little court with his iron rod, and lorded it 
 over the king just as an usher in a school 
 will lord it over a lower boy. He was, in 
 short, as he can be now and then, inimitable 
 and irresistible. ' Yes,' my young relative 
 said, ' I am furious and delighted too ! I 
 never was so much entertained in all my 
 life ! He is more amusing than all the Paris 
 theatres put together.' 
 
 " When I came back I found him disputing 
 with Mar' Yvonne in my bedroom. He was 
 turning over the contents of my wardrobe, 
 to choose himself some white cravats. ' Ah, 
 these are what I want,' he said ; ' serious 
 ties, very serious ties, most serious ties ! ' He 
 wrapped three up in an old newspaper, and 
 was going away without speaking to me after 
 a hearty silent handshake. I tried to ques- 
 tion him. ' Hush ! a mystery ! of capi- 
 tal importance ! you shall know all about
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 241 
 
 it by-and-by ! ' and he went off bursting with 
 laughter. There was an alarming look in 
 his eyes which made me suspect some terrible 
 humbug. I cross-questioned Mar' Yvonne. 
 She said : ' I am sure, sir, that Monsieur 
 Matthias is plotting something. He has 
 brought me two shirts to iron, and he 
 said to me, " You understand, Mar' Yvonne, 
 that they must be shiny as shiny as the 
 inside of your saucepans ! " What can it all 
 mean ? Has he any matrimonial projects ? ' 
 
 " November, 1879. There were no matri- 
 monial plans, and Villiers' new mad project 
 surpasses for comicality the best conception 
 of the immortal Labiche. He has offered 
 himself as a candidate in the i yth Arrondisse- 
 ment at the elections to the Conseil General 
 of the Seine, which are to take place on 
 the loth of next January ! Nor is this all ! 
 the progenitor of Bonhomet is supported by 
 the Royalist committee in Paris, which intro- 
 duces him, patronizes him, and pays all his 
 electioneering expenses. It seems utterly 
 improbable, and still it is absolutely true. 
 He has bewitched the most solemn per- 
 
 R
 
 242 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 sonages, captivated the stiffest dowagers, and 
 gained the enthusiastic support of the clergy 
 of his parish. Those shirts and cravats were 
 for his meetings, of which it appears he has 
 already held two, both brilliantly successful. 
 
 " His adversary is the redoubtable negro, 
 Heredia, a red Republican for all his black 
 skin. All the newspapers to-day are talking 
 of this unexpected candidature, and laughing 
 at it. The ' Figaro ' is, as always, sym- 
 pathetic to Villiers, but it looks upon the 
 whole thing as somewhat of a poetic fancy. 
 Some old Royalist papers, however, such as 
 the 'Gazette de France,' support the claims 
 of the great writer with many laudatory 
 phrases. This very day I have had a long 
 talk with my cousin about the whole busi- 
 ness, and I have convinced myself that, in 
 spite of pleasantries and banter, he does not 
 at heart look upon it as at all a matter of 
 humbug. I am certain he has a secret hope 
 and desire of success. How full of contra- 
 diction is the human breast ! This admirable 
 poet, this artist par excellence, has just let 
 fall to me this phrase, incomprehensible as
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 243 
 
 coming from his lips : ' After all, I hold 
 Bulwer's opinion that the really successful 
 man should begin by literature, go on to 
 public life, and end in office.' Fortunately 
 this is but a dream of ambition flitting across 
 his mighty brain, and he will soon laugh at 
 it himself. He has, moreover, no chance 
 of being elected, whatever his illusions may 
 be. He told me himself that he had some- 
 what alarmed some worthy delegates who 
 interviewed him, by stating that, if he was 
 honoured by election, he should demand, 
 from the aesthetic point of view, the demo- 
 lition of several monuments, such as the 
 Opera House, the Church of St. Sulpice, and 
 the Pantheon. And he also desires, with the 
 object of providing a refuge for literary men, 
 to obtain the re-establishment of the Debtors' 
 Prison ! " 
 
 Let me add to these fragments of per- 
 sonal notes the following passage extracted 
 from an article I have already mentioned, 
 and which was dedicated by Villiers de 1'Isle 
 Adam to the glory of Mdlle. Augusta 
 Holmes.
 
 244 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 " I had been chosen as the candidate of 
 the Royalist committee at the elections for 
 the Conseil General of Paris, on the roth of 
 January, 1880. If my memory serves me, 
 my candidature was for the iyth Arrondisse- 
 ment, in opposition to that redoubtable revo- 
 lutionist, M. de Heredia. It may be added, 
 by the way, that the results of these elections, 
 within five-and-twenty votes, being nowa- 
 days perfectly well known beforehand, I had 
 accepted the nomination solely for the sake 
 of the honour of being beaten. 
 
 " I obtained, as I expected, the suffrages 
 of six hundred electors ; my worthy anta- 
 gonist (whose touching fugitive poetry the 
 ' Figaro ' was then publishing) obtained the 
 resulting majority of a thousand or twelve 
 hundred votes to which he owes his triumph ; 
 and thus both men of letters were content. 
 
 " But with regard to what concerns us just 
 now, the amusing part of the business is this : 
 At that time the project of an Academy of 
 Lyric Composition for the town of Paris was 
 already much discussed, and one evening 
 before the great day I declared at a party,
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 245 
 
 before two of the most matter-of-fact and 
 red Republican of the councillors, that if, 
 contrary to all expectation (for after all the 
 election has its whims), I was successful in 
 this venture, my first care, when the proper 
 moment arrived, would be to point out to 
 the commission the practical competence and 
 usefulness of the eminent composer as a pos- 
 sible member of the official jury of this body. 
 Then, with that gentle and self-satisfied smile 
 which is so eminently characteristic of such 
 individuals, those two guileless ones called 
 me a poet (which always entertains me), and 
 dismissed my project to the limbo of space. 
 So I dubbed them prosy, in order to gratify 
 their little vanity, and I was not at all sur- 
 prised to hear that it was those two members 
 who, if report speaks truly, influenced the 
 commission the next year in favour of the 
 musician, and had her placed upon the jury 
 by an enthusiastic majority. What poets 
 our municipal councillors are ! " 
 
 I did not see the end of this wonderful 
 adventure. Important family events called 
 me back into Brittany, at the end of 1879, as
 
 246 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 I then thought for a short visit ; but providence 
 ruled otherwise, and I have never been in 
 Paris since, except as a casual visitor. 
 
 Thenceforward, in spite of my deep affec- 
 tion for Villiers, and our years of close inti- 
 macy, I only held rare communication with 
 him, with here and there a hasty meeting 
 rarer still. Does this imply that he was faith- 
 less-hearted ? No, indeed ! He had, on the 
 contrary, what is popularly called a heart of 
 gold. But in order to demonstrate his affec- 
 tion to you, he needed your bodily presence. 
 He lived so much in the far-away land of 
 dreams, that if you did not remind him con- 
 stantly and tangibly of your existence, you 
 came little by little to hold a vague and 
 shadowy place in his mind, like the sweet 
 and far-off memory of some loved and long- 
 lost friend. And this was my fate. New 
 elements, too, and more intimate affections, 
 entered into his life ; his increasing literary 
 reputation brought him new friendships and 
 new admirers, and forced him into more 
 regular and constant literary production. His 
 last years were certainly his fullest. Then
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 247 
 
 came sickness, the hospital ward, and death, 
 without, alas ! our having met again and re- 
 knitted the strands of our old friendship. 
 What matter ! my faith is his that if life 
 is hard, it is at all events short and soon we 
 shall meet again ! 
 
 Here then end my personal reminiscences. 
 I owe my ability to add in one last chapter 
 some details of the poet's later life to the nu- 
 merous articles concerning him published im- 
 mediately after his death. Amidst these 
 articles, filled, many of them, with inaccuracies 
 and absurd apocryphal stones, there is one 
 which should fix the attention of all artists. 
 It was published by M. G. Guiches in the 
 " Nouvelle Revue," and has already been 
 often referred to in the pages of this book. 
 The young and subtle author (whose psycho- 
 logical researches have not withered up his 
 heart) has succeeded perfectly in fathoming the 
 hidden depths of the nature of the author of 
 "Axel." He has shown in a strikingly true 
 and touching way the slow metamorphosis of 
 that ingenuous nature, in the midst of the hypo- 
 crisies, the cruelties, and the villainies of life,
 
 248 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 and he has given the most admirable and 
 speaking word-portrait of the poet that I am 
 acquainted with. I reproduce it here. When 
 the reader has perused it, let him turn back to 
 the picture at the beginning of this volume, 
 and the Villiers de 1'Isle Adam of 1880, 
 resuscitated by the magic of the pen and the 
 art of the graver's tool, will appear lifelike 
 before him. " He would raise his head, 
 proudly tossing back his hair with a noble 
 gesture, and you saw his face in all its in- 
 tellectual beauty. The broad forehead, lined 
 with parallel wrinkles, proclaimed the supreme 
 harmony of the mental powers which had ex- 
 panded it, as it were, into a superb page in the 
 book of art. The deep depressions on the 
 temples denoted the mathematical aptitude of 
 which he so often gave proof. The light blue 
 eyes bore all the external characteristics 
 which betoken the possession of exceptional 
 powers of memory, and the prominent eye- 
 balls, swimming in the light of his mystic 
 visions, or dimmed with the tears which any 
 religious emotion or deep artistic feeling would 
 bring to them, made his glance strangely
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 249 
 
 luminous. All the life of the countenance had 
 gathered towards and remained in the upper 
 part of the face the lower part was so reduced 
 that it seemed to disappear. The animal or 
 sensual characteristics of the face were ren- 
 dered invisible by the fact that the swelling 
 contour of the cheeks concealed the angle of 
 the jawbones, while the chin, hidden under a 
 Louis XIII. beard, betrayed by its smallness 
 his want of decision in practical matters. The 
 slight moustache, often twisted up a la mous- 
 quetaire, was out of harmony with the expres- 
 sion of the mouth, full of the anxiety of a 
 dreamer who scents danger from afar, pursued 
 into the excesses of his dream by the torments 
 of daily life, and tasting, even yet, the bitter- 
 ness and painful humiliation of the solicitations 
 which necessity had driven him to utter. 
 
 " From that mouth issued strange laugh- 
 ter, sometimes ingenuous, long and hearty, 
 sometimes short and jerky, sometimes low, 
 yet shrill, like the laughter of some old 
 savant, half-mad with learning, when he 
 discovers the precious meaning of some 
 ancient inscription, or, again, like the diabolic
 
 250 
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 gaiety of those old gnomes who are described 
 in ancient German books as inhabiting the 
 moss-grown belfry towers of the Father- 
 land."
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Closing years Birth of a son Villiers' widow Little 
 Totor and his father Success of the "Contes 
 Cruels" Appearance of "L'Eve Future" in the 
 " Gaulois "The " Vie Moderne "The murderous 
 treatment of the " Nouveau Monde " at the Theatre 
 des Nations The deaths of the marquis and the mar- 
 quise J.K.Huysmans "ARebours" His opinion 
 of Villiers' work " Triboulat Bonhomet " " Propos 
 d'au-dela " " Akedysseril " " L J Amour Supreme " 
 " L'Eve Future " Lectures in Belgium Return to 
 Paris Prosperity ' ' Histoires Insolites " " Nou- 
 veaux Contes Cruels" "Axel" Sickness Letter 
 from J. K. Huysmans, detailing the last moments 
 and the death of Villiers Conclusion. 
 
 HE most important event in this 
 part of Villiers' life is obviously 
 the birth of his son. The entrance 
 into his dreary existence of this 
 child, upon whom he could pour out all the
 
 252 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 tenderness of his heart, till now jealously 
 treasured up, gave fresh energy and buoyancy 
 to the great and unhappy poet, who had ima- 
 gined that all earthly happiness was ended for 
 him. It is worthy of remark how much 
 Villiers' literary fertility gained in amount and 
 in regularity from this time. Doubtless his 
 paternal responsibilities obliged him for the 
 first time to face the realities of life in a 
 practical fashion. 
 
 I never was acquainted with the person 
 who now bears the brilliant, if burdensome, 
 name of Villiers de 1'Isle Adam. I know 
 that she was without any education, of the 
 humblest extraction, and I am aware that the 
 liaison gave rise to much calumny on the part 
 of the poet's enemies, and much sadness and 
 astonishment on that of his friends. But I 
 know, also, that for ten years that woman was 
 the brave and faithful companion of the great 
 artist ; that she softened the closing bitterness 
 of his life by her affection and devotion ; 
 that she shared his poverty, nursed him in 
 sickness, and that in bearing him a son she 
 gave him the one pure happiness that he ever
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 253 
 
 knew in this world. And I know, lastly, that 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, lying on his deathbed, 
 on the very brink of eternity, did not think 
 this humble companion unworthy of that 
 supreme act of self-sacrifice by which he gave 
 her the right to bear his name before God 
 and men. For all these reasons, the widow 
 of Villiers has a right to the deference of all 
 admirers and friends of her late husband, and 
 I believe I shall best show mine by wrapping 
 the story of this liaison, which after all con- 
 cerns nobody but the actors in it, in respectful 
 silence. 
 
 As soon as little Victor (" Totor," as he 
 was called in the intimacy of his family circle) 
 had left his first baby lispings behind him, and 
 was able to toddle a little, he became the con- 
 stant companion of his father's walks. In the 
 daytime one was seldom to be met without the 
 other, and there used to be something at once 
 comic and touching in Villiers' delight, asto- 
 nishment, and admiration over the prattlings of 
 his little son. 
 
 The "ContesCruels," published by Calmann 
 Levy, appeared in iSSi, and in spite of the in-
 
 254 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 difference of the Parisian public to all really 
 artistic work, the book was too powerful and 
 too original not to create a certain amount of 
 sensation. Some of the chief critics scornfully 
 gave the work a few laudatory sentences, and 
 straightway the press followed like a flock of 
 sheep. So great is the power of journalism 
 that a few weeks made Villiers famous. He 
 took advantage of this revival of popularity to 
 place his copy in various papers and magazines, 
 and thus earn a little money. Meanwhile 
 " L'Eve Future" was nearly finished. Some 
 of his friends, knowing the writer's difficulties, 
 proposed to occupy themselves with the en- 
 deavour to get this, the crowning effort of his 
 literary life, published as a serial. Although 
 the idea of seeing his work cut up and served 
 to the public in daily slices made Villiers 
 shiver with horror, he accepted, driven by 
 hard necessity. It was the " Gaulois " which 
 had the idea of offering the profound and 
 startling work of the gifted writer as intellec- 
 tual food to its readers all of them habitual 
 admirers of Ohnet, Tarbe, and Montepin. 
 The issue had to be stopped at the tenth
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 255 
 
 number, for the middle-class public left off 
 subscribing in swarms. The disappointment 
 was not great to Villiers, who had always 
 looked upon the appearance of " L'Eve Fu- 
 ture " in the serial columns of the " Gaulois " 
 as a sort of gigantic joke. It was not till two 
 years later (in 1884) that his book found a 
 setting worthy of it in the beautiful and luxu- 
 riously got-up review, " La Vie Moderne," 
 then published by Charpentier. Villiers even- 
 tually became one of the most assiduous contri- 
 butors to this truly artistic publication. 
 
 I will only mention in the most summary 
 manner the ridiculous performance of the 
 " Nouveau Monde," which took place at the 
 Theatre des Nations in 1883. There is no use 
 now in raking up old quarrels ; but Villiers 
 was cruelly played upon and shamefully de- 
 ceived on that occasion. He ought never to 
 have allowed his play to see the footlights 
 under conditions which made its failure a 
 foregone conclusion. I was not present on the 
 opening night. There were six performances. 
 Mdlle. Rousseil was simply grotesque, and I 
 have been assured that she acted badly on
 
 256 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 purpose. One of my brothers was present, 
 one evening, at the massacre, and he told me 
 that the hubbub in the auditorium was deafen- 
 ing. Villiers led the clamour, armed with ahuge 
 key, on which he whistled noisy Tyrolean airs. 
 This remarkable historical drama, perhaps the 
 finest ever written on that particular subject, 
 still awaits the good pleasure of some intelli- 
 gent and artistic manager. But I hardly know 
 whether that rare bird exists in France. 
 
 A cruel and twofold separation, rendered, 
 however, less cruel by his strong religious 
 faith, was reserved to Villiers in the end of 
 1883. The two lights which had for so 
 many years cast a ray of warm affection over 
 his otherwise dreary life, went out, almost 
 suddenly, one after the other. The marquise 
 and the marquis died quietly at a few months' 
 interval in their little dwelling in the Avenue 
 Malakoff. Life had not been unfriendly to 
 them on the whole. The marquis till his 
 last hour lived in his brilliant dreams, deaf 
 and blind to all reality, seeing each day in 
 some fascinating mirage the fortune and the 
 glory he was to attain the next!
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 257 
 
 The illusions of the marquise were more 
 silent and tenderer, all concentrated as they 
 were on her Matthias. In her day-dreams 
 she saw him crowned with an aureole of 
 glory, and the plaudits of the newspapers 
 (their dagger-thrusts were always concealed 
 from her by his filial tenderness) beguiled till 
 its last throb that heart so absorbed by 
 maternal love. Poor Villiers wept sorely, 
 prayed devoutly at the bedside of his dead 
 parents, spent all the money he possessed 
 (not much, poor fellow!), in having them 
 fittingly buried, and then went back with 
 a burst of passionate tenderness to his little 
 Totor." 
 
 It was at this moment that he gave up 
 living in furnished lodgings, having inherited 
 from the old couple their simple furniture, 
 amongst which survived one or two rem- 
 nants of former grandeur, a grand piano by 
 Pape, and a Louis XV. table with fine 
 copper mounts. 
 
 Providence owed Villiers some compen- 
 sation for such bitter sorrows, borne with so 
 much Christian resignation ; and if the void 
 
 s
 
 258 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 caused by the loss of his parents was never 
 entirely filled, yet some strong and con- 
 siderate friendships, which surrounded him 
 even on his deathbed, did much to lessen it. 
 Among these friends, none was more useful 
 and more congenial to him than M. J. K. 
 Huysmans. Until the year 1884, the two 
 writers had frequently met at close quarters 
 without making acquaintance. Each was 
 afraid of the other's exterior, and neither 
 realized their great psychological and in- 
 tellectual resemblance. This resemblance 
 was, however, not identical. For while Vil- 
 liers allowed his dreams to eddy at the mercy 
 of contrary winds across the broad sphere of 
 speculative thought, Huysmans, more master 
 of his own thoughts, and holding the reins 
 of his imagination even in its wildest flights, 
 condensed his into one of the strongest, 
 most original, best conceived and best exe- 
 cuted books of modern times. I allude to 
 "A Rebours." 
 
 Knowing as I did the innermost depths 
 of Villiers' nature, I can imagine, judging 
 from my own sensations, what exquisite
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 259 
 
 pleasure the perusal of this fascinating book 
 must have given him. I can see his blue 
 eyes fill with tears as he turns over those 
 pages instinct with living and immortal art 
 Such emotions are amongst the noblest and 
 most beautiful in life ! But that which must 
 have specially touched Villiers is that the 
 accomplished writer had devoted an impor- 
 tant passage in his book to the author of 
 " L'Eve Future." I reproduce here, shorten- 
 ing it a little, Huysmans' opinion of the 
 works of Villiers de 1'Isle Adam. But I 
 should state that it was formed before the 
 publication of his two masterpieces, " L'Eve 
 Future " and " Axel." 
 
 " He then turned his attention to Villiers 
 de 1'Isle Adam, in whose scattered works he 
 still noted some seditious passages, and in 
 which some thrills of morbid emotion still 
 vibrated, but which, with the exception at 
 least of ' Claire Lenoir,' no longer shed such 
 an overwhelming sense of horror on the 
 reader. This last story was evidently in- 
 spired by those of Edgar Poe, whose love of 
 close discussion and taste for the horrible it
 
 260 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 reproduces. The same might be said of 
 ' L'Intersigne,' which was later on inserted 
 in the ' Contes Cruels,' a collection of tales of 
 indisputable talent, amongst which was one, 
 ' Vera/ which Des Esseintes [the hero of 
 Huysmans' book] looked upon as a master- 
 piece in miniature. In this last the fanciful- 
 ness of the story is full of an exquisite 
 tenderness. We no longer have the gloomy 
 phantoms of the American author, but a 
 warm, translucent, almost celestial vision, the 
 opposite, though in an identical style, of 
 Beatrice and Ligeia, those pallid spectres 
 raised by the inexorable nightmare of the 
 opium-eater. This story also treats of the 
 operation of the human will, but not as 
 to its weaknesses and failures, under the 
 influence of terror. It studies, on the con- 
 trary, its excitement under the impulse of a 
 conviction, developing into a fixed idea, and 
 demonstrates that power which succeeds even 
 in pervading the very atmosphere, and im- 
 posing its will on intangible things." 
 
 " But," he went on to say, " there exists 
 another side in the temperament of Villiers,
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 261 
 
 far more keen and clearly-defined a side 
 of gloomy jesting and cruel raillery. This 
 gives rise, not to the paradoxical mystifi- 
 cations of Edgar Allan Poe, but to that sad 
 banter of the heavy-hearted jester in which 
 Swift revelled. 
 
 " One series of short pieces, ' Les Demoi- 
 selles de Bienfilatre,' ' L'Affichage Celeste,' 
 ' La Machine a Gloire/ ' Le plus beau diner 
 du monde,' reveal a power of banter of a 
 singularly bitter and inventive order. All 
 the impurity of contemporary utilitarianism, 
 all the ignominy of the century, are glorified 
 in these works, whose pungent irony so de- 
 lighted Des Esseintes." 
 
 A little further on, in an anthology which 
 Des Esseintes has had printed for his own 
 use " a little chapel with Baudelaire as its 
 patron saint" we find the " Vox Populi" of 
 Villiers : " A superb coin, struck in a golden 
 mould, with the effigies of Leconte de L'Isle 
 and of Flaubert." 
 
 This great book, " A Rebours," was the 
 bond which united Huysmans to Villiers de 
 1'Isle Adam in what was to prove a lasting
 
 262 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 friendship, the tender consideration and 
 manly affection of which was most beneficial 
 to the latter, softening to him many a blow, 
 many a bitterness, and many a humiliation. 
 
 If he had lived long enough it might have 
 given him a taste for a regular, sober, retired 
 and studious existence, and have drawn him 
 away by degrees from the terrible manner of 
 life which ended by consuming his strength. 
 But it was too late. By the time Huysmans 
 knew him, death had marked him for his 
 own ! 
 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam produced a great 
 deal between the publication of the " Nouveau 
 Monde" and that of " L'Eve Future" (1883 
 to 1886). First of all came " Triboulat Bon- 
 homet," the first volume of a long series he 
 projected, which was to relate with minute 
 detail all the adventures and discoveries 
 of the worthy doctor. This is how the 
 author expresses himself on the subject 
 in the preface placed at the head of this 
 work : 
 
 "We first of all, in order to initiate the 
 public into the character of Doctor Bonhomet,
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 263 
 
 give three tales which illustrate in a general 
 manner his individual peculiarities. 
 
 " Next, the doctor himself takes up his 
 parable and tells us the more than strange 
 story of ' Claire Lenoir,' the heavy responsi- 
 bility for which we leave entirely on his 
 shoulders. If, as we have some reason to 
 fear, this personage, whose a6lual existence 
 is incontestable, obtains some popularity, we 
 shall soon publish, not without regret, certain 
 anecdotes of which he is the hero, and certain 
 aphorisms of which he is the author." 
 
 This volume, besides " Claire Lenoir," con- 
 tains the admirable ironical allegory of Bon- 
 homet the swan-hunter, " The Paper of Dr. 
 Triboulat Bonhomet on the ' Utilization of 
 Earthquakes/ " and the " Banquet of the 
 Eventualists." 
 
 "Triboulat Bonhomet" was followed by 
 " Propos d'au-dela" (i vol., published by 
 Brunhoff), and the superb prose poem, 
 " Akedysseril," which reproduces in realistic 
 fashion the dazzlingly splendid visions of the 
 East Indies. Then, almost simultaneously 
 with " L'Eve Future," another dreamy work,
 
 264 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 full of dignity and sadness, "L'Amour Su- 
 preme," appeared at the same publishers, 
 and, in 1886, " L'Eve Future" in its final 
 form appeared in the booksellers' shop-fronts 
 garbed in a whimsical covering. Villiers 
 gave the key to this book when he dedicated 
 it " To dreamers and to scoffers." Its pages 
 are indeed the lists in which those two cham- 
 pions, fancy and irony, struggle eternally 
 together without either coming out the victor. 
 The author wrote for this book, the most im- 
 portant work of his literary life, a long preface, 
 the first part of which only was published at 
 the beginning of the volume. M. G. Guiches, 
 in the remarkable study from which I have 
 already frequently quoted in the course of this 
 work, has reproduced the original text in its 
 entirety. I will only cite the following frag- 
 ment : " I know no precedent for my book, 
 none like it, nor analogous to it. Whether 
 it arouses anger or merely meets with indiffe- 
 rence, I do not think it will be utterly for- 
 gotten, for in truth its gloomy pages do not 
 treat of the famous ' De omni re scibile,' but 
 rather of the ' et quibusdam aliis.' "
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 265 
 
 The appearance of " L'Eve Future" caused 
 a sort of stupor of astonishment amongst the 
 ranks of the critics. These gentlemen really 
 did not know what to say to it. It was not 
 like anything that was generally written, 
 and, besides, Villiers' reputation made them 
 fear some mystification. Yet it was impos- 
 sible to deny that this one book contained 
 more imagination, more scientific knowledge, 
 and more art than all the other works appear- 
 ing at the same time put together. The re- 
 viewers, to get out of their difficulty, launched 
 into vague praises or puerile jests, diluted 
 with sugary compliments, and all of them, 
 without much understanding it, acclaimed 
 the "incontestable intellectual superiority of 
 this original conception." 
 
 Villiers was forthwith consecrated a great 
 writer, his renown crossed the Channel, and 
 penetrated across the frontier, causing much 
 preoccupation in Belgium, that literature- 
 loving country, always on the watch for what- 
 ever succeeds in France. The following 
 year an association for providing courses of 
 lectures on different subjects, having its head-
 
 2 66 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 quarters at Brussels, made lucrative offers to 
 the author of " L'Eve Future." Villiers, 
 although he was already sorely stricken by 
 the malady which was eventually to carry 
 him off, gladly accepted this opportunity of 
 publicly enunciating his ideas on men and 
 art. He started, and had not occasion, like 
 Baudelaire, to complain of his reception by 
 the worthy Belgians. His success was very 
 great. Some hasty notes, written by him to 
 a friend, and published by M. Guiches in the 
 " Nouvelle Revue," enable us to follow the 
 course of his triumphs. I reproduce them 
 here. I should add, to make matters clear, 
 that Villiers had left Paris just at the moment 
 that a new collection of his tales, " Les His- 
 toires Insolites," was about to appear at 
 Quantin's. 
 
 " My dear M , 
 
 " I write in great haste. I cannot 
 send to the 'Gil Bias' for the note till to- 
 morrow, as I have just come in from a lecture, 
 and am very tired in spite of the astonishing 
 success I have had.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 267 
 
 " I beg of you (in great haste, post just 
 going) to send out the presentation copies 
 with the publisher's compliments, in the 
 author's absence. This is constantly done. 
 I can yet earn 800 francs by lectures here, 
 so I cannot come back so soon. But I 
 will give up the whole of to-morrow to 
 drawing up notes and other matters for the 
 book. And I have, besides, all the proofs 
 of another book to correct right off. 
 
 " At least 500 copies have been sold in 
 advance in Belgium through my lectures, 
 at which I have read, or am about to read, 
 extracts. I go on Tuesday to Liege, then 
 to Antwerp, Ghent, etc., and shall be in 
 Paris in less than ten days. Greetings ! " 
 
 " My dear M , 
 
 " You send me no books, and yet 
 you have no idea of the enthusiasm with which 
 I am received here, nor that two or three 
 hundred book-lovers are buying my works, 
 which, rightly or wrongly, do not seem to have 
 been written solely to be used for lighting 
 fires. The newspapers say wonderful things of
 
 268 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 me, and I am very much pleased I am giving 
 le<5tures in several towns, and hope to bring 
 back a little money. I shall not be able to 
 start back till Saturday or Sunday. It can- 
 not be possible that the ' Histoires Insolites' 
 are not even stitched yet. Hearty greetings ! 
 
 " VILLIERS. 
 
 " P.S. I have already caught the Belgian 
 accent!" 
 
 " My dear Friend, 
 
 " Great haste, post just off. Huge 
 success, five recalls, the queen, etc. Three 
 columns about me in every paper. I am at 
 the Grand Hotel, No. 147. 
 
 " Hasty greetings ! 
 " VILLIERS DE L'!SLE ADAM. 
 
 " P.S. Send the ' Histoires Insolites' for 
 lecture." 
 
 Thus did fortune, so long perverse towards 
 the poet, consent at last to shower her smiles 
 upon him. Alas ! she only did it to make
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 269 
 
 the final blows she was preparing to deal 
 him seem more cruel ! She hated this great 
 gentleman, this poet, who had always borne 
 with magnificent scorn the deepest wounds 
 she gave him, scarce feeling them, indeed, 
 thanks to that sovereign balm of fancy which 
 had been given to him at birth by his god- 
 mother, the fairy queen of the ideal. And 
 now, to avenge herself for all his disdain, 
 she was about to call the forces of agonizing 
 physical suffering to her aid. 
 
 Everything smiled on Villiers in that year 
 1888. He was free from want; he had 
 grown famous ; publishers received him with 
 a friendly smile ; he heard himself addressed 
 as " Master " at the evening parties at Char- 
 pentier's ; the smaller fry of the literary world 
 buzzed flatteringly around him. " Axel " (in 
 the "Revue Independante") was making a 
 great stir. His books, the " Histoires Inso- 
 lites " and the " Nouveaux Contes Cruels," 
 were being bought. He himself was asto- 
 nished at the sudden reaction. And lo ! sick- 
 ness came upon him like a terrible, implacable 
 enemy, threw its arms about him, overthrew
 
 270 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 him, cast him on his bed groaning, shivering, 
 lost and convulsed in agonizing suffering. 
 A short time before, the poor poet, weary 
 of Paris, and longing for green woods and 
 water, had retired to Nogent-sur-Marne ; 
 and thither death sent his pale-faced emis- 
 saries to take possession of him. 
 
 Another pen, reader, more worthily than 
 mine, will tell you how he left Nogent for 
 the house of the Brothers of St. Jean de 
 Dieu ; how his last hours passed, there, 
 and how he died, after accomplishing a final 
 sacrifice worthy of all his life. For I have 
 appealed to one who was the deeply-moved 
 witness and the chief support of Villiers' last 
 agony, the last to bid him farewell on the 
 shores of eternity, to relate in all its true 
 and heartbreaking details the story of the 
 poet's end. 
 
 M. Huysmans understood the motive of 
 my request, and he has consented, in spite of 
 its bitterness, to revive the memory of the 
 sad hours spent by that deathbed, for the 
 sake of paying a last homage to his friend 
 and comrade. Here is his letter:
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 271 
 
 "Paris, April 21, 1892. 
 
 " Dear Sir, and Brother Writer, 
 
 " You are by no means a stranger 
 to me. I have read your words about Vil- 
 liers in ' L'Hermine,' and several times, if 
 my memory does not deceive me, our late 
 friend mentioned you to me. I knew, there- 
 fore, that I had to do with one whose out- 
 ward appearance only was unfamiliar, when 
 Landry 1 spoke to me of the book you thought 
 of writing. 
 
 " Villiers was very dear to me, and like 
 you (especially on evenings when I have had 
 to endure some very empty chatter) I am 
 haunted by the presence of him who certainly 
 may be bracketed with Barbey d'Aurevilly 
 as the two most astonishing conversationalists 
 of our day. I first knew him many years 
 ago (in 1876) at the house of Catulle Mendes, 
 who managed the ' Republique des Lettres,' 
 on which we were both writing. But our 
 
 1 M. G. Landry, head clerk to M. Savine, the book- 
 seller, whom I cannot sufficiently thank for the sym- 
 pathy, help, and information he has given me during 
 the writing of my book.
 
 272 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 friendships and our tastes alike differing, we 
 soon drifted apart. We met again after the 
 publication of ' A Rebours/ and thence- 
 forward, far from the boulevards, our friendly 
 relations recommenced. He used to come 
 on Sundays, with his child, little Totor, to 
 dine with me, and these occasions were 
 memorable ones to those who met him. Sus- 
 picious, and justly on the defensive as he 
 generally was when he met literary people, 
 the hesitating mode of expression in which 
 he usually took refuge the moment he felt 
 he had let himself go too far, was laid aside 
 in the congenial atmosphere of faithful friend- 
 ship and true admiration; and, safe from 
 any fear of plagiarism or treachery, he would 
 launch out and talk about his own life, in a 
 fashion at once poetic and realistic, ironical 
 and madly gay. 
 
 " I remember, in this connection, one 
 1 4th of July, when he came and dined with 
 the father of Lucien Descaves, at Mont- 
 rouge. After dinner, he sat down to the 
 piano, and, lost in a sort of dream, he sang, 
 in his cracked and quavering voice, bits of
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 273 
 
 Wagner, mixed up with choruses of barrack 
 songs, and joining all together with strident 
 laughter, wild jokes, and quaint rhymes. 
 
 "But nobody ever had such a talent for 
 raising and transforming a joke into something 
 far beyond its apparent scope, and even be- 
 yond the widest range of possibility. There 
 was a punchbowl always flaming, as it were, in 
 his brain. How often have I seen him in the 
 morning, just out of bed and hardly awake, 
 holding forth as brilliantly as when of an 
 evening he would tell us astounding anec- 
 dotes and inimitable stories over our coffee ! 
 
 " But our meetings grew rarer. Sickness 
 prostrated him, laid him shivering in his bed. 
 Weary of Paris, he settled at Nogent, and soon 
 grew worse. Dr. Robin recognized the symp- 
 toms of cancer, but disguised the truth, assert- 
 ing that the malady was one of the digestive 
 organs, and fortunately Villiers believed him. 
 One day that he was more suffering than 
 usual, the sick man complained to me about 
 the house he was in. It was, as a matter of 
 fa6t, as cold as a cellar, sunless, almost rotted 
 with damp. He said he would like to leave
 
 274 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 it, and added that he needed skilful nurses to 
 turn and move him in his bed. I mentioned 
 the Brothers of St. Jean de Dieu in the Rue 
 Oudinot in Paris, and two days later I had a 
 letter from him saying he was settled in their 
 house, thanks to the mediation of Coppee 
 with the director, which obtained for him 
 exceptionally easy terms of admission. I 
 found him there delighted with the change, 
 convinced of his speedy recovery, full of 
 plans, amongst others to give up going to the 
 brasseries on the boulevards and to work 
 quietly in some corner far from the buzz of 
 journalism. 
 
 " He who had been so unlucky and so poor 
 all his life was now in comparative affluence, 
 and no longer haunted by detestable pecuniary 
 anxieties. Mallarme, a very sincere and at- 
 tentive friend, had opened a secret subscription 
 for him, and I, on my part, had at my disposal 
 a tolerable sum which the faithful Francis 
 Poictevin had confided to me with the same 
 object. 
 
 " Villiers began at this time to talk about 
 ' Axel,' which was then on the stocks, and
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 275 
 
 which he desired to remodel, suppressing 
 some theories in it which, from the Catholic 
 point of view, he thought were unorthodox. 
 And then suddenly he grew silent. For the 
 first time, perhaps, in his life, that gift of fancy, 
 which had enabled him to forget all the end- 
 less sufferings of life in the fairyland of his 
 imagination, failed him. He beheld life as it 
 really is, understood that cruel reality was 
 about to wreak her vengeance on him, and 
 then his long martyrdom began. 
 
 " The digestive functions ceased to work, his 
 strength failed, his emaciation became frightful. 
 A sort of straw-coloured shadow crept over his 
 features, and in the wasted face the eyes lived 
 on, seeming to pierce the very soul of the on- 
 lookers with their terrifying glance. In spite 
 of the efforts of Madame Mery Laurent, a 
 friend who nursed him and petted him, bring- 
 ing him the most nourishing food and authentic 
 wines, he could not eat, and death approached 
 with rapid strides. 
 
 " And here must come in the sad episode 
 of his marriage. For reasons which he did 
 not disclose, Villiers hesitated, hung back,
 
 276 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 would not answer when we spoke to him 
 timidly, and with much circumlocution, about 
 his little son, and suggested that in order 
 to legitimize the child he should marry the 
 mother, with whom he had long lived. Im- 
 pelled by our argument, that probably after 
 his death the Minister of Public Instruction 
 would grant a pension to the child that bore 
 his name, he at last consented. But when 
 it came to fixing the day and getting the 
 necessary papers together, he put us off, 
 raised objections, and finally shut himself 
 up in such obstinate silence that we had to 
 be silent too. The friends who were in the 
 habit of visiting him, Madame Mery Laurent, 
 Stephane Mallarme, Leon Dierx, Gustave 
 Guiches, and I myself, did not know what 
 wiles to employ to induce him to yield. He 
 was growing hourly weaker, and we began 
 to fear he would die before we could get the 
 documents necessary for the marriage to- 
 gether. Sick with anxiety, it occurred to me 
 one morning to apply to the almoner of the 
 Brothers of St. Jean de Dieu, a Franciscan 
 from the Holy Land, the Rev. Pere Sylvestre.
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 277 
 
 He was a gentle and compassionate monk, 
 who had already helped Barbey d'Aurevilly 
 to die. I reminded him of the lamentable 
 story, which he already knew, for Villiers had 
 confessed to him and received the communion 
 from his hand. 
 
 "He simply answered: 'Well, just wait 
 for me there. I will go up and say a word to 
 him.' Five minutes later, he left the sick- 
 room, and Villiers had consented to an imme- 
 diate marriage. 
 
 " Time pressed, and it was difficult to get 
 hold of the certificates which were scattered 
 about in different registry offices. Of the few 
 friends who still remained faithful to him (his 
 cafe and newspaper acquaintances had of 
 course long since abandoned him), the only 
 ones left in Paris were Leon Dierx, who was 
 shut up all day in his office, Gustave Guiches, 
 and myself. It was summer-time. Mallarme 
 was ill, and had fled to the country. Madame 
 Mery Laurent was away taking waters. 
 There was a wild hunt after the necessary 
 documents. Guiches and M. de Malherbe (a 
 clerk at Quantin's bookshop, who was to be
 
 278 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 one of the wife's witnesses) devoted themselves 
 to it, and between the three of us, with the 
 help of an employe at the Mairie of the 
 7th Arrondissement, M. Raoul Denieau, an 
 admirer of Villiers, who smoothed down many 
 difficulties which we should have stumbled 
 at, we contrived on the very day appointed 
 for the marriage to bring together the neces- 
 sary certificates. The marriage took place in 
 the sick-room. And here I hesitate somewhat 
 to reveal the whole truth. But you will make 
 whatever use you think right of this letter, 
 and you will judge whether, amongst the facls, 
 all of them absolutely true, which I send you, 
 to strengthen the authoritative accuracy of your 
 book, these particular ones should be given to 
 the public. On the whole, I think myself that 
 they should for the details of the suffering 
 of such a man as Villiers are worth learning. 
 " When it became necessary to sign the re- 
 gisters, the wife stated that she did not know 
 how to write. There was a terrible moment 
 of silence. Villiers lay in agony with his eyes 
 closed. Ah ! he was spared nothing. His 
 cup overflowed with bitterness and humilia-
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 279 
 
 tion ! And while we were all looking at each 
 other, almost broken-hearted, the wife added : 
 ' I can make a cross as I did for my first 
 marriage.' And we took her hand and helped 
 her to make the mark. After the ceremony 
 the four witnesses, Mallarme, Dierx, M. de 
 Malherbe, and I, tasted a little champagne 
 which Villiers insisted on offering to us. Then 
 the Rev. Pere Sylvestre came to celebrate the 
 religious marriage. And then it was that we 
 had an opportunity of realizing the priest's 
 kindness of heart. Villiers' wife used to 
 spend the day with him. In spite of her 
 false position, the Brothers of St. Jean shut 
 their eyes to this infringement of the letter of 
 their rules. But of course her visits had to 
 end with the day ; she had to leave at twilight, 
 and this was a heartbreak to the unhappy 
 man, who dreaded dying alone in the night. 
 When he had pronounced the marriage bene- 
 diction, the Rev. Pere Sylvestre said in rather 
 a hurried voice, 'Although women are not 
 allowed to spend the night here as a rule, 
 I have obtained permission that now you are 
 married you shall not be separated again.'
 
 28o VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 The monk had thought of giving this last 
 happiness to the dying man. Villiers' eyes 
 filled with tears ; he made a gesture, then fell 
 back exhausted, almost fainting from fatigue, 
 and we left him. 
 
 " I went to see him the next day, and all 
 the following days. He could no longer 
 speak, but would squeeze your hand gently, 
 and look at you with great sad patient eyes. 
 The evening before his death he received 
 the last sacrament, and lay half-conscious, his 
 wan face grown hollow and his throat rattling. 
 I felt the end was very near, but overwhelmed 
 as I was I had to hurry away, for it was very 
 late, and the convent was closing for the 
 night. 
 
 " A ring at the bell early next morning 
 made me jump out of bed. ' Villiers is dead,' 
 I said to myself, and it was too true. His 
 wife sank sobbing into a chair in my room. 
 
 " What more shall I say ? Better say 
 nothing of the literary vultures who settled 
 on that corpse, of the reporters who used to 
 come daily to await his decease and place 
 their wares, who were now able to draw
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 281 
 
 their pay, and cease their constant calls of 
 inquiry. 
 
 " Little use either in telling you about the 
 funeral, at which the mourners, Mallarme, 
 Dierx, and I, sheltered the poor unconscious 
 orphan boy as best we could from the pelting 
 rain. And yet I will say one other word 
 concerning that funeral ceremony, at which 
 the Rev. Pere Sylvestre pronounced the 
 benediction, in the Church of St. Francois 
 Xavier. Our own resources being exhausted, 
 we applied, Gustave Guiches and I, to the 
 office of the ' Figaro,' and M. Magnard, 
 with a kindly courtesy which I never can 
 forget, offered to place at our disposal the 
 sum necessary to defray the expenses of the 
 decent burial of our friend. 
 
 " Others, my dear sir, will give you more 
 complete information concerning Villiers' life, 
 and will furnish you with the details of that 
 extraordinary existence, starving, forlorn, 
 penniless, and clouded by troubles so great 
 as to make his condition at times without 
 parallel in its misery. I have confined my- 
 self to those sad incidents which immediately
 
 282 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 preceded his death, and, as you have narrated 
 the beginning of his life, so I relate to you 
 its close. 
 
 "In conclusion, dear sir, I have to wish 
 your book good luck, and I do it with all my 
 heart. May your work kindle some spark of 
 regret for its own injustice in that public 
 which so resolutely refused to acknowledge 
 the talent of Villiers before his death. 
 "Believe me, etc., 
 
 "J. K. HUYSMANS." 
 
 The next day, Tuesday, 2oth August, 1889, 
 a few hours before the burial, M. Henri de 
 Lavedan, a young writer whom Villiers de 
 1'Isle Adam had inspired with one of those 
 enthusiastic attachments which he alone could 
 create, asked permission to gaze once more 
 on the features of the dead man who had 
 been so dear to him, and prayed long in the 
 quiet little room. I desire to place here, as 
 the conclusion of the work in which I have 
 endeavoured to outline the life of that great 
 believer and great artist, the Comte Philippe 
 Auguste Matthias de Villiers de 1'Isle Adam,
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 283 
 
 these lines instinct with deep and sincere 
 feeling, which were written immediately after 
 this farewell visit : 
 
 " On an August morning, wet and dreary 
 as a November evening, in the house of 
 the Brothers of St. Jean de Dieu, which stands 
 in the quiet quarter of the ' Invalides,' the 
 brown-robed monk gently closed the door 
 behind me, and I saw before me Villiers de 
 1'Isle Adam lying on his deathbed. We are 
 alone together, he and I. The little room is 
 very quiet, clean with the cleanliness of the 
 cloister and the death-chamber coldly calm. 
 On the chimney-piece the flame of the candles 
 burns high and motionless, undisturbed by any 
 breath of air ; and the half-closed eyes of the 
 gifted scoffer who shall scoff no more, gazing 
 lifelessly at the coffin waiting on the floor, 
 seem to contemplate it as though it were a 
 friend. I kneel on a prie-dieu, and gaze 
 on the face of the master I have known 
 and loved. The narrow bed on which he 
 died is all too wide for his poor body, ema- 
 ciated by long and cruel suffering. But the
 
 284 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 proud and beautiful head, whose great fore- 
 head seems to have been carved out by death 
 for posterity in the firmest and whitest of 
 marbles, stands out with a royal dignity. 
 Sightless and voiceless as it is, bereft of 
 thought, of everything that made it glorious, 
 that splendid head still seems to fill the room. 
 It seems to be the head of him who Villiers 
 would have been, had he lived, and fought, 
 and sung, in one of those ages of faith which 
 he loved, and loved with the bitter love of the 
 exile. It was as solemnly beautiful under the 
 shadow of those cotton curtains, as it would 
 have been under a gold-fringed dais, and I 
 could have fancied I beheld the corpse of one 
 of his ancestors, a Villiers de 1'Isle Adam of 
 the crusading times, who, worn out by fever, 
 fatigue, long marches, wounds, and thirst, had 
 at last, on some burning shore of Palestine, 
 rendered up his gallant soul to God who 
 called it. 
 
 " Visions and beliefs. These were the 
 whole of Villiers' being. As I looked at 
 him lying there with a poor rosary in his 
 folded hands, his whole frame stretched out
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 285 
 
 with a tired air (betokening as much weari- 
 ness as resignation), I could not but remember 
 that he was a steadfast Christian, believing, 
 and practising what he believed. It was his 
 faith alone which kept him straight to the 
 end of the book of his life, to the last line, 
 and to his last breath, without a blot on the 
 escutcheon which descends to his son as stain- 
 less as he inherited it from his own father. 
 
 "And I imagine that the severe and noble 
 expression on the calm features of this Chris- 
 tian man of letters comes of the joy of feeling 
 he is free, delivered at last from this life of 
 emptiness, of folly, of many pangs, which 
 brought him nothing, neither health, nor 
 wealth, nor love, nor glory. 
 
 " Death did not come upon Villiers un- 
 awares ; he watched its slow approach with 
 perfect calmness. He bore the Cross of Malta ; 
 he was well prepared to meet the King of 
 Terrors, and when he drew near and stood 
 before him, he received the accolade fearlessly, 
 like a soldier and a gentleman, hoping perhaps 
 that his reward was beginning. He knew, in 
 his humble trust, that the hour had come for
 
 286 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. 
 
 his own judgment on high, for that of his 
 work here below, and doubtless he repeated 
 mentally that motto of Hassan-ben-Sabbah 
 which he placed at the head of his own poem, 
 ' Azrael ' ' O Death ! those who are about to 
 live salute thee ! ' " 
 
 FINIS.
 
 CHISWICK PRESS : C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO. 
 TOOKS COURT. CHANCERY LANS.
 
 Celegrapbu BMress : 
 
 Stnilocks, London, 
 
 si BEDFORD STREET, w.c. 
 
 December ffyj 
 
 A LIST OF 
 
 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S 
 
 PUBLICATIONS 
 
 AND 
 
 FORTHCOMING WORKS 
 
 The-Books mentioned in this List can 
 he obtained to order by any Book 
 seller if not in stock, or will !>e sr.n 
 by the Publisher post free on receij>\ 
 tf the published price.
 
 5n&ej of But bora. 
 
 Alexander . 
 Anstey 
 
 PAGE 
 
 16 
 10 
 
 Kennedy . . . 
 
 PAG 
 17 
 
 Arbuthnot . 
 Atherton 
 
 ii 
 17 
 
 Kipling and Balestier . 
 Knight 
 
 14 
 . . 5 
 
 Baddeley . 
 
 Balestier 
 
 9. 19 
 . i^, 14, 17 
 
 Kraszewski 
 Lanza .... 
 
 15 
 
 Barrett 
 Behrs .... 
 
 17 
 
 9 
 
 Le Caron . 
 Lee . 
 
 5 
 
 Bendall 
 
 19 
 
 
 
 Hjornson 
 
 6, 13, 15 
 7 
 
 Leland 
 Lie . 
 
 A 
 
 
 17 
 
 
 
 Brown 
 Brown and Griffiths . 
 
 12 
 
 19 
 
 Lowry . 
 
 Lynch. 
 
 17 
 
 16 
 
 Buchanan . 
 Butler 
 Caine . * . 
 Caine .... 
 Cambridge . 
 Chester 
 Clarke 
 
 . 11,14,17 
 7 
 . n, 13, 16 
 19 
 16 
 
 10 
 
 14 
 6 
 
 Maartens . 
 Macnab 
 Maeterlinck 
 Mantegazza 
 Maude 
 Maupassant 
 Maurice 
 
 14 
 14 
 18 
 10 
 ii 
 IS 
 Ii 
 
 Colmore 
 
 13 
 ii 
 
 Michel 
 Mitford 
 
 : : i! 
 
 Compayre" . 
 Coppe"e ... 
 
 7 
 17 
 
 Moore . . 
 
 13 
 
 Couperus . 
 Cowen 
 
 15 
 14 
 
 Norris 
 Ouida .... 
 
 13 
 
 Crackanthorpe . 
 Davidson . 
 Bauson 
 De Quincey 
 Dowson 
 Eeden 
 
 17 
 7 
 19 
 
 9 
 13 
 6 
 
 Oliphant . 
 Palacio-ValdcFs . 
 Pearce 
 Pennell 
 Philips 
 Phelps 
 
 5 
 IS 
 14 
 10 
 17 
 
 Elhvanger . . . 
 Ely 
 
 10 
 
 . . ii 
 
 Pinero 
 
 18 
 
 
 ii 
 
 
 
 Fitch . . . 
 
 
 
 
 Forbes 
 
 
 Riddell 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Roberts (C G D ) 
 
 
 Frederic 
 
 . 10, 16 
 
 Roberts (A. von) 
 Salaman (M C ) 
 
 15 
 
 Garnett 
 Gaulot . 
 
 6 
 
 Salaman (J. S.) 
 
 ii 
 
 Gilchrist 
 Goncharoff . 
 Gore .... 
 
 14 
 
 15 
 19 
 
 Scidmore . 
 Scudamore . 
 
 12 
 II 
 
 
 
 
 
 Grand 
 
 J 3> 14 
 
 Steel .... 
 
 14 
 
 Gray .... 
 Gray (Maxwell) 
 Griffiths 
 
 ii 
 13 
 
 Tallentyre 
 Tasma 
 Terrv 
 
 10 
 
 . 14, 16 
 
 Hall . 
 
 
 
 
 Hanus . . . 
 
 Harland 
 Hardy 
 
 7 
 17 
 
 16 
 
 Tolstoy 
 Tree .... 
 Valera 
 
 5- 15, 18 
 18 
 
 Heine .... 
 Henderson . . . 
 
 . . 8,9 
 
 17 
 6 
 
 Vazoff 
 Waliszewski 
 Ward . 
 
 15 
 4 
 
 Holdsworth 
 Howard 
 Hughes 
 Hungerford 
 Hyne .... 
 Ibsen .... 
 Irving .... 
 Ingersoll 
 
 13 
 M 
 7 
 13- T 4. l6 
 13 
 18 
 i3 
 
 12 
 
 Warden . 
 Waugh 
 Weitemeyer 
 West .... 
 Whistler . 
 White 
 Whitman . 
 Williams . 
 Wood 
 
 16 
 5 
 
 12 
 
 . 6, 10 
 
 13 
 
 12 
 II 
 
 Teaftreson . 
 
 9 
 
 Zangwill . 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 Zola . 
 
 17
 
 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 In Tii'o Volumes, 
 
 REMBRANDT: 
 
 HIS LIFE, HIS WORK, AND HIS TIME. 
 
 BY 
 
 E'MILE MICHEL, 
 
 MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 FLORENCE SIMMONDS. 
 
 EDITED AND PREFACED BY 
 
 FREDERICK WEDMORE. 
 
 With 33 photogravures, 34 coloured reproductions of paintings 
 and chalk drawings, and 250 illustrations in the text. 
 
 THE ORDINARY EDITION. Printed on superfine paper 
 specially made for this work, price 2 2s. net. 
 
 THE EDITION DE LUXE. Limited to 150 numbered copies - 
 for Great Brjtain, printed on specially imported Japanese 
 vellum, with India proof duplicates of the photogravures,. 
 price ;io los. net. 
 
 Nothing need be said in justification of a comprehensive boolc 
 upon the life and work of Rembrandt. A classic among classics, 
 lie is also a modern of moderns. His works are to-day more 
 sought after and better paid for than ever before ; he is now at 
 the zenith of a fame which can hardly decline. 
 
 The author of this work is perhaps, of all living authorities on 
 Rembrandt, the one who has had the largest experience, the best 
 opportunity of knowing all that can be known of the master. 
 
 The latest inventions in photogravure and process-engraving 
 have enabled the publisher to reproduce almost everything that is 
 accessible in the public galleries of Europe, as well as most of the 
 numerous private collections containing specimens of Rembrandt's 
 work in England and on the Con'inent. 
 
 An illustrated prospectus may be ha 1 on application.
 
 4 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 autumn publications. 
 
 MEMOIRS. 
 
 BY CHARLES GODFREY LELAND 
 
 (HANS BREITMANN). 
 In Two Volumes, 8vo. With Two Portraits. Price 32*. 
 
 CONTESTS. Early Life, 1824-1837. Boyhood and Youth, 1837-1845. 
 University Life and Travel in Europe. 1845-1848. The Return to 
 America, 1848-1862. Life during the Civil War and its Sequence, 
 1862-1866. Life on the Press, 1866-1869. Europe Revisited, 
 1869-1870. England, 1870. 
 The Times. From first to last a very entertaining book, full of good stories, 
 
 strange adventures, curious experiences, and not inconsiderable achievements 
 
 instinct with the strong personality of the writer, and not unpleasantly tinned 
 
 with the egotism that belongs to a strong personality." 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF AN EMPRESS. 
 
 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA. 
 
 BY R. W A L I S Z E VV S K I. 
 
 Translated from the French. In Two Volumes, 8vo. With Portrait. 
 
 Price 32^. 
 
 M. \VaIi.--ze wski's book is based upon unpublished documents in the St.ite 
 archives, and upon the memoirs and correspondence of his subject. There has 
 been no more extraordinary figure in Russian history than this gifted, tem- 
 pestuous, and dissolute empress, " the Semiramis of the North." The story of 
 the plots and intrigues, the wars and triumphs, the succession of favourite', and 
 the fierce outbreaks with which her reign was filled, reads like the half-m> thical 
 chronicle of a king of Babylon or one of the earlier Moguls. It is a most extra- 
 ordinary historical romance which M. Waliszewski has written, and it presents 
 some fresh aspects of European history. 
 
 A FRIEND OF THE QUEEN. 
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE AND COUNT FERSEN. 
 
 BY PAUL GAULOT. 
 
 Translated from the French by Mrs. CASHEL HOEY. In Two Volumes, 
 
 8vo. With Two Portraits, Price 241. 
 
 The interesting and brilliant life of the French Court towards the close of 
 the eighteenth century, with the varied figures of historical and personal in- 
 terest, are nowhere so closely depicted as in this account of the relations 
 existing between Marie Antoinette and the fascinating young Swedish nobleman, 
 Count Axel de Fersen, whose romantic friendship with the il'.-fated Marie 
 Antoinette led him gladly to peril his life again and again in va : n attempts at 
 rescue. The hero of Court_/?fcf in the palmy days of Louis XVI., a soldier in 
 the American Revolution and an aide-de-camp at Yorktown, the disguised 
 coachman of Marie Antoinette in the flight which ended so wretchedly at 
 Vaiennes, the agent of Gustavus III. in the attempts to reinstate the Bourbons, 
 the favourite of Charles XIII., and the Grand Marshal of Sweden, and finally 
 the victim of mob fury, killed like a mad dog with sticks and stones in Stockholm 
 here, surely is a career to which history offers few counterparts. The main 
 facts are known. The details which lend colour and throw a new light on many 
 historical points have been obtained for this volume from family archives.
 
 MR. WILLIAM HEIN EM ANN'S LIST. 
 
 Third and Cheaper Edition. 
 
 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. 
 
 A STUDY OF HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 BY ARTHUR WAUGH, B.A. OXON. 
 
 With Twenty Il'ustrations from Photographs specially taken for this 
 
 Work, Five Portraits, and Facsimile of Tennyson's MS. 
 
 Crown 8vo. Cloth gilt edges, or uncut, 6*. 
 
 CONTENTS. Lincolnshire. Cambridge. Literary Troubles and 
 Arthur Hallam s Death. Early Years in London. The Begin- 
 nings of Fame. From The Princess to In Memoriam. Maud. 
 Idylls of the King. From the Idylls to the Dramas. Queen Mary 
 and Harold. '1 he Falcon and The Cnt>. The Promise of May 
 and Becket. From 7 iresias to Demeter. The Closing Years. 
 The Voice of the Age. 
 
 Sixteenth and Cheaper Edition. 
 
 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS IN THE 
 SECRET SERVICE. 
 
 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF A SPY. 
 
 BY MAJOR HENRI LE CARON. 
 
 With New Preface. 8vo, boards, price 2s. 6d., or cloth 3*. 6d. 
 
 Extract f ram THE TIMES' Nctice of the First Edition. 
 
 " It is of absorbing interest ; and it affords an invaluable key to the dark 
 history of the great conspiracy which has been the true pivot of our domestic 
 politics during recent years. It discusses some startling particulars about 
 certain notorious dynamiters, their confederates, patrons, sympathisers, and 
 acquaintances. The portraits which the author draws of the Irish-American 
 leaders, the late associates and paymasters of the Parliamentary party which 
 has converted the Gladstonians to Home Rule, are vigorous and life-like ; but 
 the interest inspired by this whole gallery of unscrupulous and venal patriots 
 pales before that created by the unconscious sketches afforded us of the man 
 who fought and beat them all." 
 
 %* The Library Edition, with Portraits and Facsimiles, 8vo, TJS., 
 is still on sale. 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 BY COUNT LEO TOLSTOY. 
 Translated from the Russian by CONSTANCE GARNETT. 
 
 STORIES OF GOLF. 
 
 BY PROFESSOR KNIGHT, 
 
 Of St. Andrews L'nizersity; 
 
 AND ^ 
 
 T. T. OL1PIIANT.
 
 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 forthcoming TCflorfto. 
 
 LETTERS OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 Edited by ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE. With Portraits and Illustrations* 
 
 MY PARIS NOTEBOOK. 
 
 By the Author of "An Englishman in Paris." 
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM: 
 His Life and Work. 
 
 By R. PONTAVICE DE HEUSSEY. Translated from the French bj- LaJy MARV 
 Lovu. With Portrait and Facsimile. 
 
 LIFE OF HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 By RICHARD GARNETT, LL.D. With Portrait. Crown 8vo (uniform with the 
 translation of Heine's Works). 
 
 LITTLE JOHANNES. 
 
 By FREDERICK- VAN EEDEN. Translated from the D.itc'n by CLARA BELL. 
 With an Introduction by ANDKEW LANG. Illustrated. 
 
 *,* Aiso a Large Paper Edition, 
 
 STRAY MEMORIES. 
 By ELLEN TERRY. In One Volume. 410. Illustrated. 
 
 A NEW PLAY. 
 
 By BjORNSTjERNE BjoRNSON. Translated from the Norwegian. 
 
 SONGS [ON STONE. 
 
 By J. McNElLL WHISTLER. A Series of lithographic drawings in colour 
 by Mr. WHISTLER, will appear from time to time in parts, under the 
 above title. Each containing four plates. The first issue of 200 copies 
 will be sold at Two Guineas net per part, by Subscription for the Series 
 only. 
 
 There will also te issued 50 copies on Japanese fafer, signfii l-y the 
 artist, each Five Guineas net. 
 
 THE NOVELS OF BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON. 
 
 UN /FORM EDITION.
 
 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 Great Educators. 
 
 A Series of Volumes by Eminent Writers, presenting in their 
 entirety "A Biographical History of Education" 
 
 The Times. " A Series of Monographs on 'The Great Educators' should 
 prove of service to all who concern themselves with the history, theory, and 
 practice of education." 
 
 The Speaker. " There is a promising sound about the title of Mr. Heine- 
 mann's new series, ' The Great Educators.' It should help to allay the hunger 
 and thirst for knowledge and culture of the vast multitude of young men and 
 maidens which our educational system turns out yearly, provided at least with 
 AD appetite for instruction." 
 
 Each subject will form a complete volume, crown 8vo, 51. 
 
 Now ready. 
 
 ARISTOTLE, and the Ancient Educational Ideals. By 
 
 THOMAS DAVIDSON, M.A.. LL.D. 
 The Times. "A very readable sketch of a very interesting subject." 
 
 LOYOLA, and the Educational System of the Jesuits. By 
 
 Rev. THOMAS HUGHES, S.J. 
 
 Saturday Review. " Full of valuable information If a school- 
 master would learn how the education of the young can be carried on so as to 
 confer real dignity on those engaged in it, we recommend him to read Mr. 
 Hughes' book." 
 
 ALCUIN, and the Rise of the Chnstian Schools. By 
 Professor ANDREW F. WEST, Ph.D. 
 
 FROEBEL, and Education by Self-Activity. By II. COUR- 
 
 THOPE BoWBN, M.A. 
 
 ABELARD, and the Origin and Early History of Uni- 
 versities. By JULES GABRIEL OOMPAYRJJ, Professor in the Faculty of 
 Toulouse. 
 
 In preparation. 
 
 ROUSSEAU ; and, Education according to Nature. By 
 
 PAUL H. HAXCS. 
 
 HORACE MANN, and Public Education in the United 
 States. By NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER, Ph.D. 
 
 BELL and LANCASTER, and Public Elementary Edu- 
 cation in England. By J. G. FITCH, LL.D., Her Majesty's Inspector 
 of Schools. 
 
 Volumes on Herbart, and Modern German Education ; and Pestalozzi ; 
 or, the Friend and Student of Children, to f jllow.
 
 8 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 THE WORKS OF HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 CHARLES GODFREY LELAND, M.A., F.R.L.S. 
 (HANS BREITMANN). 
 
 The Library Edition, in crown 8vo, cloth, at $s. per volume. Each volume of 
 this edition is sold separately. The Cabinet Edition. Vols. I. -VIII. in 
 special binding, boxed, price 2 los. the set. The Large Paper Edition, 
 limited to 100 Numbered Copies, price 15?. per volume net, will only be 
 supplied to subscribers for the Complete Work. 
 
 The following Volumes, forming 
 
 HEINE'S PROSE WORKS, 
 
 Are now ready. 
 
 I. FLORENTINE NIGHTS, SCIINABELEWOPSKI, 
 THE RABDI OF BACHARACH, and SHAKE- 
 SPEARE'S MAIDENS AND WOMEN. 
 
 II., III. PICTURES OF TRAVEL. 1823-1828. In Two 
 Volumes. 
 
 IV. THE SALON. Letters on Art, Music, Popular Life 
 
 and Politics 
 
 V., VI. GERMANY. In To Volumes. 
 
 VII., VIII. FRENCH AFFAIRS. Letters from Paris 1832 
 
 and Lutetia In Two Yols, 
 
 Times. "We can recommend no better medium for mailing acquaintance 
 at first hand with ' the German Aristophanes ' than the works of Heinricb 
 Heine, translated by Charles Godfrey Leland. Mr. Leland manages pretty 
 successfully to preserve the easy grace of the original." 
 
 Saturday Rn'ietv. "Verily Hen.rich Heine and not Jean Paul is der 
 Einzige among Germans : and great is the venture of translating him which 
 Mr. Leland has so boldly undertaken, and in which he has for the most part 
 quitted himself so well." 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette. "It is a brilliant performance, both for the quality of 
 the translation of each page and the sustained effort of rendering so many of 4 
 them. There is really hardly any need to learn German now to appreciate 
 Heine's prose. EnglisH literature of this country does not contain much prose 
 more striking, more entertaining, and more thought provoking than these now 
 placed before English readers. " 
 
 Daily Telegraph " M r. Leland has done his translation in able and scho- 
 larly fashion." 
 
 In preparation. 
 
 THE POETIC WORKS OF HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 The first of which, forming Vol. IX. of the Works, will be 
 
 THE BOOK OF SONGS. 
 
 Followed by 
 
 NEW POEMS. 
 
 ATTA TROLL, GERMANY AND ROMANCERO. 
 LAST POEMS. 
 
 %* Large Paper Edition, limited to too Numbered Cofitt, 15*. each, net, 
 Prospectus on application.
 
 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. g 
 
 VICTORIA : Queen and Empress. By JOHN CORDY 
 
 JEAFF/JESON, Author of " The Real Lord Byron," &c. In Two Volumes, 
 8vo. With Portraits. 1 ios. 
 
 DE QUINCEY MEMORIALS. Being Letters and other 
 
 Records here first Published, with Communications from COLERIDGE, The 
 WORDSWORTHS, HANNAH MORE, PROFESSOR WILSON and others. Edited 
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 RECOLLECTIONS OF MIDDLE LIFE. By FRANCISQUE 
 
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 PRINCE BISMARCK. An Historical Biography. By 
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 THE FAMILY LIFE OF HEINRICH HEINE. Illus- 
 
 trated by one hundred and twenty-two hitherto unpublished letters ad- 
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 RECOLLECTIONS OF COUNT LEO TOLSTOY. 
 
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 I. SUSPIRIA DE PROFUND1S. With other Essays. 
 
 II. CONVERSATION AND COLERIDGE. With other 
 
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 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 MR. PUNCH'S POCKET IBSEN. A Collection of some 
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 12 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
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 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 13 
 
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 THE HEAVENLY TWINS. By SARAH GRAND, Author 
 
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 ARTHUR MOORE. 
 
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 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. [/ preparation. 
 
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 r 4 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
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 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 15 
 
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 16 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
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 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 17 
 
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 i8 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 IDrantattc ^Literature, 
 
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 II. THE PROFLIGATE : A Play in Four Acts. With 
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 VIII. SWEET LAVENDER. A Drama in Three Acts. 
 IX. THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. A Farce in Three Acts. 
 
 To be followed by The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, The Weaker Sex, 
 Lords and Commons, and The Squire.
 
 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANWS LIST. 19 
 
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 LOVE SONGS OF ENGLISH POETS, 15001800. 
 
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 20 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. 
 
 The London Office of this old-established Review has 
 been removed to 21 Bedford Street, where copies can 
 be obtained regularly on publication. Price 25. 6d. 
 
 THE NEW REVIEW. 
 
 With the commencement of the New Year this 
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 Mr. ARCHIBALD GROVE, M.P. 
 
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