a soul less steeped than his, he did not doubt his strength for an instant, and received in private many gentle consolations, a little sincere applause, and true advice.
Among others, there was a letter and some lines that were addressed to him in this regard, which was found among his manuscripts, and which we shall reproduce here.
Monsieur,
Forgive me for being so long delayed in thanking you for the gift that you were kind enough to make me of your poems. Monsieur Gérard16 only gave me your address a few days ago.
If molten metal has rejected its scoria, those scoria can be presumed to be metallic, and although it might annoy you to presume too much about your future, I would like to believe that it will be remarkable. I have been young too, Monsieur, young and melancholy, like you, and I have often blamed the social order for the anguish I experienced; I still have a fragment of verse—for I wrote verses when young—in which I expressed a desire to go and live among the wolves. A great confidence in the divinity has often been my sole refuge. My first tolerable verses will attest to that; they are not as good as yours, but, I repeat, they are not without numerous parallels. I tell you that in order that you might judge the sad but profound pleasure that yours gave me. I have all the more sympathy with some of your ideas because, although my destiny has undergone a great transformation, I have neither forgotten my first impressions, nor acquired much taste for the society I cursed at twenty years of age. Although I no longer have any complaint to make on my own account today, I mourn when I encounter its victims. But Monsieur, you were born with talent, you have received a better education than me; you will, I hope, triumph over the obstacles with which the road is strewn. If that happens, as I hope it will, always conserve the fortunate originality of your mind, and you will have cause to bless providence for the ordeals to which it has subjected you in your youth.
You probably do not like eulogies, so I will not add anything to what I have already said. I think, in any case, that you would prefer to know the reflections that your poetry has suggested to me. You will see that it is not out of egotism that I have said so much to you about myself.
Accept, Monsieur, with my sincere thanks, the assurance of my consideration and keenest interest.
Béranger17
16 February 1832.
TO PÉTRUS BOREL
Brave Pierre, why the melancholy
That reigns in your verses; why, on the future,
That dolorous gaze, followed by a long sigh,
Why that disgust for life?
It is, however, beautiful; look at the horizon
That is opening before us, bright with light...
Come, we shall cross these feeble barriers
That hold us like a prison.
What does a little pain matter in the morning of life,
Or the dark cloud wandering at our zenith?
The name that one engraves in rude granite
Escapes the fingernail of envy.
And when evening comes, we shall rest,
We shall find the glory at the end of the quarry,18
And love will be there, seductive chimera!
Pouring its balm upon our distress.
Look at those immobile masses around us
Ignorant of the sweet embraces of love,
Or the fine transports of ambition,
Incomplete and crippled beings!
Do they not have more right than us to denounce
Heaven,
Those who, thrown naked on this arid road,
Pressing the empty cup to their fiery lips,
Encounter nothing but bile?
And you, you complain, when, full of youth,
You run free and strong, like a brave charger,
Of a few days of mourning that make you forget
The sweet kisses of a mistress.
What more do you ask, then, for your share?
Love, glory, amity will fall due to you in part,
Is that not enough to charm the voyage?
Fortune will only come in time!
Forward, forward! Be brave, Pierre!
Bear your heavy cross along wretched roads,
Without showing to others your hands and keens
Bruised by the edges of stones.
For glory is a bad mother to her poor children!
Bow down before the laureates of the world entire;
But it ought not to see the crown of thorns
That tears their burning foreheads.
Those verses bear the signature of a great artist who honors France; we would have liked to be able to publish it, but we are afraid of offending his modesty and of seeming too indiscreet in revealing the source of a naïve poetry that is utterly and confidentially intimate.
On comparing the two sides, one of abuse and the other of noble and friendly advice, one will see, in this as in all cases, that vile criticism only emerges from below.
This is all that we have been able to collect regarding the material life of Champavert; as for the history of his soul, its entirety is in his writings; we shall see it again, first in the present volume of stories, and then in the Rhapsodies, whose second edition will appear shortly. Finally, for details regarding his disgust for life and his suicide, we shall refer to the story entitled “Champavert,” which concludes this volume.
Monsieur Jean-Louis, his inconsolable friend, has been kind enough to confide all of Champavert’s manuscripts and papers of which he was the owner to us, in order that we could put them in order, and he has authorized us to publish any that seemed to us to be worthwhile; to begin with, we have selected and collected these unpublished stories from among many others. If the world gives them a good reception, we shall publish them all successively, as well as several novels and plays, which we also have in our hands.
Is the premature death of the young writer a real and regrettable loss for France? We cannot answer that ourselves; it is for France to judge. It is for France to assign his rank, for Lyon, his homeland, to redeem and secure the apotheosis of its young and excessively unfortunate poet. We think it only polite, however, to warn readers who seek out and like “lymphatic”19 literature to close this book again and go to another. If, however, they desire to have some notion of Champavert’s state of mind, they have only to read what follows.
On receipt of the letter in which Champaverrt informed him of his extreme determination, Monsieur Jean-Louis left immediately, hoping to arrive in time to deflect him from his fatal plan; he was too late. As soon as he arrived in Paris he went to Champavert’s domicile; he was told that he had gone away on a long voyage. He was unable to obtain any information in the city. That evening, however, while reading the Tribune in the Café Procope he found cruel and positive news. The next day, he collected his friend’s cadaver, which had been exposed in the Morgue for three days, and had it buried in Mont-Louis cemetery; close to the grave of Héloïse and Abelard, you can still see a broken mossy stone on which, by leaning over, one can, with difficulty, read these words: To Champavert. Jean-Louis.
Greatly moved by