XAVIER DE MAISTRE

(1764-1852)

O STUDENTS of French literature the name De Maistre suggests first, Joseph Marie de Maistre,- brilliant philosopher, stern and eloquent critic, vain opponent of revolutionary ideas; but the general reader is far better acquainted with his younger brother Xavier. He was a somewhat dashing military personage, a striking contrast to his austere senior, loving the æsthetic side of life: an amateur artist, a reader of many books, who on occasion could write charmingly.

Born in Chambéry in 1764, of French. descent, he entered the Sardinian army, where he remained until the annexation of Savoy to France; when, finding himself an exile, he joined his brother, then envoy to St. Petersburg. Later he entered the Russian army; married in Russia, and lived there to the good old age of eighty-eight.

XAVIER DE MAISTRE

Perhaps the idea of authorship would never have occurred to the active soldier but for a little mishap. A love affair led to a duel; and he was arrested and imprisoned at Turin for forty-two days. A result of this leisure was the 'Voyage autour de ma Chambre' (Journey round my Room); a series of half playful, half philosophic sketches, whose delicate humor and sentiment suggest the influence of Laurence Sterne. Later on, he submitted the manuscript to his much-admired elder brother, who liked it so well that he had it published by way of pleasant surprise. He was less complimentary to a second and somewhat similar work, 'L'Expédition Nocturne' (The Nocturnal Expedition), and his advice delayed its publication for several years.

Xavier de Maistre was not a prolific writer, and all his work is included in one small volume. Literature was merely his occasional pastime, indulged in as a result of some chance stimulus. A conversation with fellow-officers suggests an old experience, and he goes home and writes Le Lepreux de la Cité d'Aoste (The Leper of Aoste), a pathetic story, strong in its unstudied sincerity of expression. XVII-602

Four years later he tells another little tale, 'Les Prisonniers du Caucase (The Prisoners of the Caucasus), a stirring bit of adventure.

His last story, 'La Jeune Sibérienne (The Siberian Girl), best known as retold and weakened by Madame Cottin, is a striking premonition of later realism. There is no forcing the pathetic effect in the history of the heroic young daughter who braves a long and terrible journey to petition the Czar for her father's release from Siberian exile.

The charm of De Maistre's style is always in the ease and simplicity of the telling. In his own time he was very popular; and his work survives with little loss of interest to-day.

THE TRAVELING-COAT

From the Journey round My Room.' Copyright 1871, by Hurd & Houghton

I

PUT on my traveling-coat, after having examined it with a complacent eye; and forthwith resolved to write a chapter ad hoc, that I might make it known to the reader.

The form and usefulness of these garments being pretty generally known, I will treat specially of their influence upon the minds of travelers.

My winter traveling-coat is made of the warmest and softest stuff I could meet with. It envelops me entirely from head to foot; and when I am in my arm-chair, with my hands in my pockets, I am very like the statue of Vishnu one sees in the pagodas of India.

You may, if you will, tax me with prejudice when I assert the influence a traveler's costume exercises upon its wearer. At any rate, I can confidently affirm with regard to this matter that it would appear to me as ridiculous to take a single step of my journey round my room in uniform, with my sword at my side, as it would to go forth into the world in my dressing-gown. Were I to find myself in full military dress, not only should I be unable to proceed with my journey, but I really believe I should not be able to read what I have written about my travels, still less to understand it.

Does this surprise you? Do we not every day meet with people who fancy they are ill because they are unshaven, or because one has thought they have looked poorly and told them so? Dress has such influence upon men's minds that there are valetudinarians who think themselves in better health than usual

some

when they have on a new coat and well-powdered wig. They deceive the public and themselves by their nicety about dress, until one finds some fine morning they have died in full fig, and their death startles everybody.

And in the class of men among whom I live, how many there are who, finding themselves clothed in uniform, firmly believe they are officers, until the unexpected appearance of the enemy shows them their mistake. And more than this, if it be the king's good pleasure to allow one of them to add to his coat a certain trimming, he straightway believes himself to be a general; and the whole army gives him the title without any notion of making fun of him! So great an influence has a coat upon the human imagination!

The following illustration will show still further the truth of my assertion:

It sometimes happened that they forgot to inform the Count de some days beforehand of the approach of his turn to mount guard. Early one morning, on the very day on which this duty fell to the Count, a corporal awoke him and announced the disagreeable news. But the idea of getting up there and then, putting on his gaiters, and turning out without having thought about it the evening before, so disturbed him that he preferred reporting himself sick and staying at home all day. So he put on his dressing-gown and sent away his barber. This made him look pale and ill, and frightened his wife and family. He really did feel a little poorly.

He told every one he was not very well,-partly for the sake of appearances, and partly because he positively believed himself to be indisposed. Gradually the influence of the dressing-gown began to work. The slops he was obliged to take upset his

stomach. His relations and friends sent to ask after him. He was soon quite ill enough to take to his bed.

In the evening Dr. Ranson found his pulse hard and feverish, and ordered him to be bled next day.

If the campaign had lasted a month longer, the sick man's case would have been past cure.

Now, who can doubt about the influence of traveling-coats upon travelers, if he reflect that poor Count de

thought

more than once that he was about to perform a journey to the other world for having inopportunely donned his dressing-gown in this?

A FRIEND

From the Journey round My Room. Copyright 1871, by Hurd & Houghton

I

We

HAD a friend. Death took him from me. He was snatched away at the beginning of his career, at the moment when his friendship had become a pressing need to my heart. supported one another in the hard toil of war. We had but one pipe between us. We drank out of the same cup. We slept beneath the same tent. And amid our sad trials, the spot where we lived together became to us a new fatherland. I had seen him exposed to all the perils of a disastrous war. Death seemed to spare us to each other. His deadly missiles were exhausted around my friend a thousand times over without reaching him; but this was but to make his loss more painful to me. The tumult of war, and the enthusiasm which possesses the soul at the sight of danger, might have prevented his sighs from piercing my heart, while his death would have been useful to his country and damaging to the enemy. Had he died thus, I should have mourned him less. But to lose him amid the joys of our winter-quarters; to see him die at the moment when he seemed full of health, and when our intimacy was rendered closer by rest and tranquillity,-ah, this was a blow from which I can. never recover!

But his memory lives in my heart, and there alone. He is forgotten by those who surrounded him and who have replaced him. And this makes his loss the more sad to me.

Nature, in like manner indifferent to the fate of individuals, dons her green spring robe, and decks herself in all her beauty near the cemetery where he rests. The trees cover themselves with foliage, and intertwine their branches; the birds warble under the leafy sprays; the insects hum among the blossoms: everything breathes joy in this abode of death.

And in the evening, when the moon shines in the sky, and I am meditating in this sad place, I hear the grasshopper, hidden in the grass that covers the silent grave of my friend, merrily pursuing his unwearied song. The unobserved destruction of human beings, as well as all their misfortunes, are counted for nothing in the grand total of events.

The death of an affectionate man who breathes his last surrounded by his afflicted friends, and that of a butterfly killed in a flower's cup by the chill air of morning, are but two similar

epochs in the course of nature. Man is but a phantom, a shadow, a mere vapor that melts into the air.

But daybreak begins to whiten the sky. The gloomy thoughts that troubled me vanish with the darkness, and hope awakens. again in my heart. No! He who thus suffuses the east with light has not made it to shine upon my eyes only to plunge me into the night of annihilation. He who has spread out that vast horizon, who raised those lofty mountains whose icy tops the sun is even now gilding, is also he who made my heart to beat and my mind to think.

Whatever may be the

No! My friend is not annihilated. barrier that separates us, I shall see him again. My hopes are based on no mere syllogism. The flight of an insect suffices to persuade me. And often the prospect of the surrounding country, the perfume of the air, and an indescribable charm which is spread around me, so raise my thoughts, that an invincible proof of immortality forces itself upon my soul, and fills it to the full.

I

THE LIBRARY

From the Journey round My Room': Copyright 1871, by Hurd & Houghton

PROMISED to give a dialogue between my soul and the OTHER. But there are some chapters which elude me, as it were; or rather, there are others which flow from my pen nolens volens, and derange my plans. Among these is one about my library; and I will make it as short as I can. Our forty-two days will soon be ended; and even were it not so, a similar period would not suffice to complete the description of the rich country in which I travel so pleasantly.

My library, then, is composed of novels, if I must make the confession- of novels and a few choice poets.

As if I had not troubles enough of my own, I share those of a thousand imaginary personages, and I feel them as acutely as my own. How many tears have I shed for that poor Clarissa, and for Charlotte's lover!

But if I go out of my way in search of unreal afflictions, I find in return such virtue, kindness, and disinterestedness in this imaginary world, as I have never yet found united in the real world around me. I meet with a woman after my heart's desire,