From _Spiridion_ to the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, then, we have this series of fantastical novels with ghosts, subterranean passages, secret hiding-places, hallucinations and apparitions. The unfortunate part is that at present we scarcely know to what category of readers they would appeal. As regards grown-up people, we all prefer something with a vestige of truth in it now-a-days. As to our children, they would prefer _Monte-Cristo_ to _Consuelo_, and _Tom Thumb_to _Spiridion_. At the time that they were written, in spite of the fact that Buloz protested against all this philosophy, these novels were quite in accordance with the public taste.
A mania for anything fantastic had taken possession of the most serious people. Ballanche wrote his _La Palingenesie_, and Edgar Quinet _Ahasverus_. Things took place through the ages, and the reader travelled through the immensity of the centuries, just as though Wells had already invented his machine for exploring time.
In a country like France, where clear-mindedness and matter-of-fact intelligence are appreciated, all this seems surprising. It was no doubt the result of infiltrations which had come from abroad.
There was something wrong with us just then, "something rotten in the kingdom of France." We see this by that fever of socialistic doctrines which burst forth among us about the year 1840.
We have the _Phalanstere_ by Fourier, _La Phalange_ by Considerant, the _Icarie_ by Cabet, and his famous _Voyage_, which appeared that very year. We were always to be devoured by the State, accompanied by whatever sauce we preferred. The State was always to find us shelter, to dress us, to govern us and to tyrannize over us.
There was the State as employer, the State as general storekeeper, the State to feed us; all this was a dream of bliss. Buonarotti, formerly Babeuf's accomplice, preached Communism. Louis Blanc published his _Organisation du travail_, in which he calls to his aid a political revolution, foretaste of a social revolution.
Proudhon published his _Memoire sur la propriete_, containing the celebrated phrase: "Property means theft." He declared himself an anarchist, and as a matter of fact anarchy was already everywhere.
A fresh evil had suddenly made its appearance, and, by a cruel irony, it was the logical consequence of that industrial development of which the century was so proud. The result of all that wealth had been to create a new form of misery, an envious, jealous form of misery, much more cruel than the former one, for it filled the heart with a ferment of hatred, a passion for destruction.
It was Pierre Leroux, also, who led George Sand on to Socialism.
She had been on the way to it by herself. For a long time she had been raising an altar in her heart to that entity called the People, and she had been adorning it with all the virtues. The future belonged to the people, the whole of the future, and first of all that of literature.
Poetry was getting a little worn out, but to restore its freshness there were the poets of the people. Charles Poncy, of Toulon, a bricklayer, published a volume of poetry, in 1842, entitled _Marines_.
George Sand adopted him. He was the demonstration of her theory, the example which illustrated her dream. She congratulated him and encouraged him. "You are a great poet," she said to him, and she thereupon speaks of him to all her friends. "Have you read Baruch?"she asks them. "Have you read Poncy, a poet bricklayer of twenty years of age?" She tells every one about his book, dwells on its beauties, and asks people to speak of it.
As a friend of George Sand, I have examined the poems by Poncy of which she specially speaks. The first one is entitled _Meditation sur les toits_. The poet has been obliged to stay on the roof to complete his work, and while there he meditates.
_"Le travail me retient bien tard sur ces toitures_. . . ."He then begins to wonder what he would see if, like Asmodee in the _Diable boiteux_, he could have the roof taken off, so that the various rooms could be exposed to view. Alas! he would not always find the concord of the Golden Age.
_Que de fois contemolant cet amas de maisons Quetreignent nos remparts couronnes de gazons, Et ces faubourgs naissants que la ville trop pleine Pour ses enfants nouveaux eleve dans la plaine.
Immobiles troufieaux ou notre clocher gris Semble un patre au milieu de ses blanches brebis, Jai pense que, malgre notre angoisse et nos peines, Sous ces toits paternels il existait des haines, Et que des murs plus forts que ces murs mitoyens Separent ici-bas les coeurs des citoyens._This was an appeal to concord, and all brothers of humanity were invited to rally to the watchword.
The intention was no doubt very good. Then, too, _murs mitoyens_was an extremely rich and unexpected rhyme for _citoyens_.
This was worthy indeed of a man of that party.
Another of the poems greatly admired by George Sand was _Le Forcat_.
_Regarder le forcat sur la poutre equarrie Poser son sein hale que le remords carie_. . .
Certainly if Banville were to lay claim to having invented rhymes that are puns, we could only say that he was a plagiarist after reading Charles Poncy.
In another poem addressed to the rich, entitled _L'hiver_, the poet notices with grief that the winter . . . _qui remplit les salons, les Wdtres, Remplit aussi la Morgue et les amphitheatres._He is afraid that the people will, in the end, lose their patience, and so he gives to the happy mortals on this earth the following counsel:
_Riches, a vos plaisirs faites participer L'homme que les malheurs s'acharnent a frapper Oh, faites travailler le pere de famille, Pour qu'il puisse arbiter la pudeur de sa fille, Pourqu'aux petits enfants maigris par les douleurs Il rapporte, le soir, le pain et non des pleurs, Afin que son epouse, au desespoir en proie, Se ranime a sa vue et l'embrasse avec joie, Afin qua l'Eternel, a l'heure de sa mort.
Vous n'offriez pas un coeur carie de remords_.
