she says: it is only tall talk!  In America the women are absolute
tyrants, and it is I who, in concert with my oppressed countrymen, am
going in for a platform agitation to restore the Rights of Men."

Upon this there was a lively battle of words between the spouses, in
which, I must own, I thought the lady was decidedly worsted.

No, Eulalie, I see nothing in these schemes for altering our relations
towards the other sex which would improve our condition.  The
inequalities we suffer are not imposed by law,--not even by convention:
they are imposed by nature.

Eulalie, you have had an experience unknown to me: you have loved.  In
that day did you,--you, round whom poets and sages and statesmen gather,
listening to your words as to an oracle,--did you feel that your pride of
genius had gone out from you, that your ambition lived in whom you loved,
that his smile was more to you than the applause of a world?

I feel as if love in a woman must destroy her rights of equality, that it
gives to her a sovereign even in one who would be inferior to herself if
her love did not glorify and crown him.  Ah! if I could but merge this
terrible egotism which oppresses me, into the being of some one who is
what I would wish to be were I man!  I would not ask him to achieve fame.
Enough if I felt that he was worthy of it, and happier methinks to
console him when he failed than to triumph with him when he won.  Tell
me, have you felt this?  When you loved did you stoop as to a slave, or
did you bow down as to a master?

FROM MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL TO ISAURA CICOGNA.

_Chere enfant_,--All your four letters have reached me the same day.  In
one of my sudden whims I set off with a few friends on a rapid tour along
the Riviera to Genoa, thence to Turin on to Milan.  Not knowing where we
should rest even for a day, my letters were not forwarded.

I came back to Nice yesterday, consoled for all fatigues in having
insured that accuracy in description of localities which my work
necessitates.

You are, my poor child, in that revolutionary crisis through which genius
passes in youth before it knows its own self, and longs vaguely to do or
to be a something other than it has done or has been before.  For, not to
be unjust to your own powers, genius you have,--that inborn undefinable
essence, including talent, and yet distinct from it.  Genius you have,
but genius unconcentrated, undisciplined.  I see, though you are too
diffident to say so openly, that you shrink from the fame of singer,
because, fevered by your reading, you would fain aspire to the thorny
crown of author.  I echo the hard saying of the Maestro: I should be your
worst enemy did I encourage you to forsake a career in which a dazzling
success is so assured, for one in which, if it were your true vocation,
you would not ask whether you were fit for it; you would be impelled to
it by the terrible star which presides over the birth of poets.

Have you, who are so naturally observant, and of late have become so
reflective, never remarked that authors, however absorbed in their own
craft, do not wish their children to adopt it?  The most successful
author is perhaps the last person to whom neophytes should come for
encouragement.  This I think is not the case with the cultivators of the
sister arts.

The painter, the sculptor, the musician, seem disposed to invite
disciples and welcome acolytes.  As for those engaged in the practical
affairs of life, fathers mostly wish their sons to be as they have been.

The politician, the lawyer, the merchant, each says to his children,
"Follow my steps."  All parents in practical life would at least agree
in this,--they would not wish their sons to be poets.  There must be some
sound cause in the world's philosophy for this general concurrence of
digression from a road of which the travellers themselves say to those
whom they love best, "Beware!"

Romance in youth is, if rightly understood, the happiest nutriment of
wisdom in after-years; but I would never invite any one to look upon the
romance of youth as a thing

               "To case in periods and embalm in ink."

Enfant, have you need of a publisher to create romance?  Is it not in
yourself?  Do not imagine that genius requires for its enjoyment the
scratch of the pen and the types of the printer.  Do not suppose that the
poet, the romancier, is most poetic, most romantic, when he is striving,
struggling, labouring, to check the rush of his ideas, and materialize
the images which visit him as souls into such tangible likenesses of
flesh and blood that the highest compliment a reader can bestow on them
is to say that they are lifelike:  No: the poet's real delight is not in
the mechanism of composing; the best part of that delight is in the
sympathies he has established with innumerable modifications of life and
form, and art and Nature, sympathies which are often found equally keen
in those who have not the same gift of language.  The poet is but the
interpreter.  What of?--Truths in the hearts of others.  He utters what
they feel.  Is the joy in the utterance?  Nay, it is in the feeling
itself.  So, my dear, dark-bright child of song, when I bade thee open,
out of the beaten thoroughfare, paths into the meads and river-banks at
either side of the formal hedgerows, rightly dost thou add that I
enjoined thee to make thine art thy companion.  In the culture of that
art for which you are so eminently gifted, you will find the ideal life
ever beside the real.  Are you not ashamed to tell me that in that art
you do but utter the thoughts of others?  You utter them in music;
through the music you not only give to the thoughts a new character, but
you make them reproductive of fresh thoughts in your audience.

You said very truly that you found in composing you could put into music
thoughts which you could not put into words.  That is the peculiar
distinction of music.  No genuine musician can explain in words exactly
what he means to convey in his music.

How little a libretto interprets an opera; how little we care even to
read it!  It is the music that speaks to us; and how?--Through the human
voice.  We do not notice how poor are the words which the voice warbles.
It is the voice itself interpreting the soul of the musician which
enchants and enthralls us.  And you who have that voice pretend to
despise the gift.  What! despise the power of communicating delight!--the
power that we authors envy; and rarely, if ever, can we give delight with
so little alloy as the singer.

And when an audience disperses, can you guess what griefs the singer
may have comforted? what hard hearts he may have softened?  what high
thoughts he may have awakened?

You say, "Out on the vamped-up hypocrite!  Out on the stage-robes and
painted cheeks!"

I say, "Out on the morbid spirit which so cynically regards the mere
details by which a whole effect on the minds and hearts and souls of
races and nations can be produced!"

There, have I scolded you sufficiently?  I should scold you more, if I
did not see in the affluence of your youth and your intellect the cause
of your restlessness.  Riches are always restless.  It is only to poverty
that the gods give content.

You question me about love; you ask if I have ever bowed to a master,
ever merged my life in another's: expect no answer on this from me.
Circe herself could give no answer to the simplest maid, who, never
having loved, asks, "What is love?"

In the history of the passions each human heart is a world in itself; its
experience profits no others.  In no two lives does love play the same
part or bequeath the same record.

I know not whether I am glad or sorry that the word "love" now falls on
my ear with a sound as slight and as faint as the dropping of a leaf in
autumn may fall on thine.

I volunteer but this lesson, the wisest I can give, if thou canst
understand it: as I bade thee take art into thy life, so learn to look on
life itself as an art.  Thou couldst discover the charm in Tasso; thou
couldst perceive that the requisite of all art, that which pleases, is in
the harmony of proportion.  We lose sight of beauty if we exaggerate the
feature most beautiful.

Love proportioned adorns the homeliest existence; love disproportioned
deforms the fairest.

Alas! wilt thou remember this warning when the time comes in which it may
be needed?

E----- G-------.