Part 9

There is more of high spirits than of wit in the lyric, which became as popular as our modern invocation of Jingo, the god of battles. It chanced one night that M. Limayrac appeared at a masked ball in the opera- house. He was recognised by some one in the crowd. The turbulent waltz stood still, the music was silent, and the dancers of every hue howled at the critic

"Si Paul Limayrac devenait fleur!"

Fancy a British reviewer, known as such to the British public, and imagine that public taking a lively interest in the feuds of men of letters! Paris, to be sure, was more or less of a university town thirty years ago, and the students were certain to be largely represented at the ball.

The "Odes Funambulesques" contain many examples of M. De Banville's skill in reviving old forms of verse--triolets, rondeaux, chants royaux, and ballades. Most of these were composed for the special annoyance of M. Buloz, M. Limayrac, and a M. Jacquot who called himself De Mirecourt. The rondeaux are full of puns in the refrain: "Houssaye ou c'est; lyre, l'ire, lire," and so on, not very exhilarating. The pantoum, where lines recur alternately, was borrowed from the distant Malay; but primitive pantoum, in which the last two lines of each stanza are the first two of the next, occur in old French folk-song. The popular trick of repetition, affording a rest to the memory of the singer, is perhaps the origin of all refrains. De Banville's later satires are directed against permanent objects of human indignation--the little French debauchee, the hypocritical friend of reaction, the bloodthirsty chauviniste. Tired of the flashy luxury of the Empire, his memory goes back to his youth--

"Lorsque la levre de l'aurore Baisait nos yeux souleves, Et que nous n'etions pas encore La France des petits creves."

The poem "Et Tartufe" prolongs the note of a satire always popular in France--the satire of Scarron, Moliere, La Bruyere, against the clerical curse of the nation. The Roman Question was Tartufe's stronghold at the moment. "French interests" demanded that Italy should be headless.

"Et Tartufe? Il nous dit entre deux cremus Que pour tout bon Francais l'empire est a Rome, Et qu'ayant pour aieux Romulus et Remus Nous tetterons la louve a jamais--le pauvre homme."

The new Tartufe worships St. Chassepot, who once, it will not be forgotten, "wrought miracles"; but he has his doubts as to the morality of explosive bullets. The nymph of modern warfare is addressed as she hovers above the Geneva Convention,--

"Quoi, nymphe du canon raye, Tu montres ces pudeurs risibles Et ce petit air effraye Devant les balles exploisibles?"

De Banville was for long almost alone among poets in his freedom from Weltschmerz, from regret and desire for worlds lost or impossible. In the later and stupider corruption of the Empire, sadness and anger began to vex even his careless muse. She had piped in her time to much wild dancing, but could not sing to a waltz of mushroom speculators and decorated capitalists. "Le Sang de la Coupe" contains a very powerful poem, "The Curse of Venus," pronounced on Paris, the city of pleasure, which has become the city of greed. This verse is appropriate to our own commercial enterprise:

"Vends les bois ou dormaient Viviane et Merlin! L'Aigle de mont n'est fait que pour ta gibeciere; La neige vierge est la pour fournir ta glaciere; Le torrent qui bondit sur le roc sybillin, Et vole, diamant, neige, ecume et poussiere, N'est plus bon qu'a tourner tes meules de moulin!"

In the burning indignation of this poem, M. De Banville reaches his highest mark of attainment. "Les Exiles" is scarcely less impressive. The outcast gods of Hellas, wandering in a forest of ancient Gaul, remind one at once of the fallen deities of Heine, the decrepit Olympians of Bruno, and the large utterance of Keats's "Hyperion." Among great exiles, Victor Hugo, "le pere la-bas dans l'ile," is not forgotten:

"Et toi qui l'accueillis, sol libre et verdoyant, Qui prodigues les fleurs sur tes coteaux fertiles, Et qui sembles sourire a l'ocean bruyant, Sois benie, ile verte, entre toutes les iles."

The hoarsest note of M. De Banville's lyre is that discordant one struck in the "Idylles Prussiennes." One would not linger over poetry or prose composed during the siege, in hours of shame and impotent scorn. The poet sings how the sword, the flashing Durendal, is rusted and broken, how victory is to him--

" . . . qui se cela Dans un trou, sous la terre noire."

He can spare a tender lyric to the memory of a Prussian officer, a lad of eighteen, shot dead through a volume of Pindar which he carried in his tunic.

It is impossible to leave the poet of gaiety and good-humour in the mood of the prisoner in besieged Paris. His "Trente Six Ballades Joyeuses" make a far more pleasant subject for a last word. There is scarcely a more delightful little volume in the French language than this collection of verses in the most difficult of forms, which pour forth, with absolute ease and fluency, notes of mirth, banter, joy in the spring, in letters, art, and good-fellowship.

"L'oiselet retourne aux forets; Je suis un poete lyrique,"--

he cries, with a note like a bird's song. Among the thirty-six every one will have his favourites. We venture to translate the "Ballad de Banville":

"AUX ENFANTS PERDUS

"I know Cythera long is desolate; I know the winds have stripped the garden green. Alas, my friends! beneath the fierce sun's weight A barren reef lies where Love's flowers have been, Nor ever lover on that coast is seen! So be it, for we seek a fabled shore, To lull our vague desires with mystic lore, To wander where Love's labyrinths, beguile; There let us land, there dream for evermore: 'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.'

"The sea may be our sepulchre. If Fate, If tempests wreak their wrath on us, serene We watch the bolt of Heaven, and scorn the hate Of angry gods that smite us in their spleen. Perchance the jealous mists are but the screen That veils the fairy coast we would explore. Come, though the sea be vexed, and breakers roar, Come, for the breath of this old world is vile, Haste we, and toil, and faint not at the oar; 'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.'

"Grey serpents trail in temples desecrate Where Cypris smiled, the golden maid, the queen, And ruined is the palace of our state; But happy loves flit round the mast, and keen The shrill wind sings the silken cords between. Heroes are we, with wearied hearts and sore, Whose flower is faded and whose locks are hoar. Haste, ye light skiffs, where myrtle thickets smile; Love's panthers sleep 'mid roses, as of yore: 'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.'

ENVOI.

"Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore. All, singing birds, your happy music pour; Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile; Flit to these ancient gods we still adore: 'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.'"

Alas! the mists that veil the shore of our Cythera are not the summer haze of Watteau, but the smoke and steam of a commercial time.

It is as a lyric poet that we have studied M. De Banville. "Je ne m'entends qu'a la meurique," he says in his ballad on himself; but he can write prose when he pleases.

It is in his drama of Gringoire acted at the Theatre Francais, and familiar in the version of Messrs. Pollock and Besant, that M. De Banville's prose shows to the best advantage. Louis XI. is supping with his bourgeois friends and with the terrible Olivier le Daim. Two beautiful girls are of the company, friends of Pierre Gringoire, the strolling poet. Presently Gringoire himself appears. He is dying of hunger; he does not recognise the king, and he is promised a good supper if he will recite the new satirical "Ballade des Pendus," which he has made at the monarch's expense. Hunger overcomes his timidity, and, addressing himself especially to the king, he enters on this goodly matter: