ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

wrote a romance, and then she said, "Of the two kinds of folly by which Madame de Genlis has attained celebrity, I have chosen the easiest. I have written a book; it remains to be seen if I have attained the same end."

"Valérie" appeared at Paris in 1804, after a short séjour made by Madame de Krudener, subsequent to her separation from her husband in 1792, in Riga, and Leipzig. The work created a sensation. It portrayed the heart as the active interpreter of the dark mysteries of conscience. Gustavus, the hero of the book, is a kind of sentimental Werther, who falls in love with the wife of the father who has adopted him, the young and beautiful Valérie, in whom we have the ardent and romantic character of Madame de Krudener; the spoilt and undisciplined child grown up to be the thoughtless and unprincipled woman, only still tormented by those religious scruples which she could never entirely divest herself of, and which she now sought relief for by transporting them into the domain of poetry. Gustavus is also a sketch from life, and the struggle of these two hearts, that meet only to suffer, are depicted with a skill peculiar to woman. "Valérie," in reality, belongs neither to the school of Goethe in his "Werther," nor to that of Rousseau in his "Nouvelle Héloïse," but to what another woman, Madame de Staël, also succeeded in depicting in her usual masterly manner in "Corinne" and "Delphine." "Valérie "introduced the fashion of promenading the hero and heroine about the world-a fashion to which the epistolary style lent itself with peculiar facilities, and the shoal upon which most imitators have wrecked themselves-that of fastidious developments and digressions-has been as skilfully avoided by Madame de Krudener as by Madame de Staël. The letters of Gustavus are replete with tenderness and subdued passion, those of Valérie are less real; they are at times cold and affected, as if the author feared to reveal the secrets of her own heart. It has been said that the philosopher Saint-Martin had a hand in this work; but although she had relations with that strange personage, it does not appear that he ever had any influence with her, still less any participation in her literary labors. "Valérie " especially abounds in descrip

tions of scenery and of events connected with the author's travels, and we find in it a notice of a visit made with her father to the Grande Chartreuse at Grenoble, disguised as a man, access to the monastery being interdicted to women. She was at that time twenty years of age, and had been married five, and her account of the emotions which she experienced not only portray the strange undisciplined and sceptical sentiments on religion by which she was all her life tormented, but also contain a prophecy of the future to which such scepticism must inevitably lead.

Two individuals were issuing on a cold and gloomy night in the autumn of 1786, enveloped in their mantles, from the Grande Chartreuse at Grenoble. The smallest of the two personages was distinguished by the grace and elegance of her shape, no less than by the inexpressible expresson of mild beauty that expanded in every feature; and it was with the liveliest marks of affection and solicitude that her companion helped her to descend the steps of the portal. The latter was a man of a certain age, but robust and well built, with a patrician air, calm and strong. Both took their way to a carriage that was awaiting them, and which took them to an inn at some distance in the town. No sooner arrived, than the youngest, overcome with fatigue, let herself fall on a sofa, at the same time unloosing her hair, which escaped in brown and silken tresses. As to the oldest of the two trayellers, he remained for a moment upright before his companion, contemplating her with quiet pleasure, till, taking her hand, he said, in a voice in which reproach was mingled with admiration, "Well, Julia! are you happy in having done what no woman dared attempt before you? What did you see? What did you feel? Speak! Must we congratulate ourselves upon our adventure? Alas, I fear not, and that our friends in Paris will laugh at us, seeing us return disappointed. For you know, my dear, they all endeavored to dissuade us from this expedition."

Instead of replying, the graceful figure rose up, and, throwing herself into the arms of him who had spoken, exclaimed, with profound emotion, "In the name of Heaven, father, do not say a word of this expedition

the good things that he dispenses to you emanate from his kindness or his irony ?"

"For Heaven's sake, Julia, be calm; your excitement leads you astray, and you do not see that you are talking blasphemy! Come to yourself, my daughter-to that calm reason which constitutes the charm of your mind, and which is only troubled by a moment's excitement."

"You think, perhaps," continued the young girl, more sedately, "that it is the sight of this monastery that we have just visited that has suggested these ideas. Well, then, learn that it was not the case; that my heart has been troubled and my head confused for a long time now-a very long time, alas!”

in Paris! Give me your promise to hold your tongue to all the idle questionings to which we shall be subjected." "And why so, my dear child?" "Do not ask me. Give me your word!" "How excited you are!" "Truly so. I no longer breathe I no longer live! It seems to me as if the gloom we have left behind us will forever darken my existence. Frightful voices murmur in my soul, which is troubled, wandering, humiliated, and would like to hide itself in the deepest abyss, not to see and not to hear. O father, father! what is our life? What frightful precipices, what gulfs open themselves under our feet, whilst we move on in joy and indifference! What a horrible enigma is that of an existence for which we This will quite suffice to show how closely shall probably pay for every minute by in- the subject of the romance attaches itself to expressible and unending punishments! the intimate existence of the author, and Who is He who will inflict these punish- we find the same incident alluded to, in a ments? I will dispense with the good things more agreeable manner, in a letter of Gusthat his gracious hand bestows, if he will tavus: "I have just been reading the life only also take back the arbitrary and tyran- of a saint, which I found in one of the drawnical bonds by which he overwhelms me! ers of my room. This saint had been a man, Nothing, nothing! I want nothing of Him and he had remained a man: he had sufwho deems it wise to veil himself eternally fered, he had cast away the desires of this from my contemplation, and to harass me world far away from him, after having courwith his secrets." ageously struggled with them; he had banished all the images of his youth from his thoughts, and raised up repentance between them and his years of solitude. He worked daily in preparing his grave, thinking with gladness that he would leave his dust to the earth, and he tremblingly hoped that his soul would go to heaven. He dwelt in the Chartreuse; in 1715 he died, or rather he disappeared, his death was so soft. Men live there who are said to be fanatic, but who every day do good to other men. What a sublime and touching idea is that of three hundred Chartreux living the most holy life, filling these vast cloisters, only raising their melancholy looks to bless those whom they meet, exhibiting in every movement the most profound calm, telling with their features, with their voices-which are never moved by excitement-that they only live for that great God who is forgotten in the world but is adored in the desert."

The father drew the child to his bosom, while she, more and more terrified, pressed herself on his breast with convulsive sobs.

"You are my father-you! I know you. I have seen you suffer for my griefs, sympathize with my tears. I read the expression of that love which sustains and raises my being upon your face, whose every feature paints to me the history of my weak heart. You do not hide yourself; you do not make of your solicitude for me a dark and gloomy mystery, in which you oblige me to believe even when my reason refuses to understand. No, father, your look bears testimony to your love; a loyal, open, irresistible testimony. I have no need to appeal to a third party to interpret your physiognomy; it is thus that a father should be with his children. So, also, do I love you; and I am faithful to you; faithful to that noble heart upon which mine reposes, and beyond which I know nothing. For of eternity, neither you nor I wish for it. Is it not true that you reject a present the granter of which persistently refuses to show himself to you, and does not even permit you to know if

"Qui dit pöete, dit toujours un peu prophète," is a proverb with the French, although of far greater antiquity, for prophet and poet were almost synonymous in the times of the Hebrews; but it is impossible not to see

dressed in Greek attire, with naked arms and bust, was no longer to be seen save in a high dress, and her hair combed back and deprived of all ornaments. She had then attained her fortieth year. Her husband, from whom she had long been separated, had died at Berlin, in 1804. For some time she wore a small crucifix of gold over her dress, but even that disappeared. She took off all her rings, reminiscences of former frivolities, but that did not prevent people admir

Madame de Krudener, as she was in the nineteenth century, in these thoughts and fancies. The woman of fashion belonged to the eighteenth century; courted and flattered, vain and affected, frivolous and inconsequent, beautiful and susceptible, a thousand triumphs awaited her triumphs of grace,triumphs of talent, and triumphs of gallantry: to the nineteenth century belonged the pious lady, the charitable mother of the poor and the afflicted, the pale, thin ascetic who seeks for mercy at the foot of the Cross, pilgrim,ing her hands, which were the prettiest in martyr, the lady with the gray dress and plain white cap covering her closely cropped hair, once so much admired!

At the period when Madame de Krudener was a women of the world, the Encyclopædists had reached the last hours of their orgies, the hours when the tables were turned, and the lights were put out, and two enormous and bloody hands-the hands of the Revolution-were feeling about at hap-hazard among the powdered heads that crowded the salons of the Baron of Holbach. Society, mined to its very base, threatened at every moment to topple over. Paris at such an epoch was filled with adventurers, visionaries, and necromancers. Mesmer reigned with magnetic wand and galvanic chains and circuits, while Saint Germain and Cagliostro resuscitated the dead, who, on their part, terrified the world by the most astounding prophecies.

It was about 1804 that Madame de Krudener first met Madame de Staël in her exile at Coppet. Both of these women-at that epoch at the very pinnacle of their worldly and literary fame-were about to follow their own line, and to take the part that was destined for them in the great events that were taking place. The one became a political, the other a religious, martyr. Equally made to exercise a powerful influence upon their contemporaries, there have not been wanting those who have made vanity the basis of their actions. There may be some truth in this, but it is very far from being the whole truth.

The first public signs of conversion on the part of Madame de Krudener manifested themselves in 1806, during her residence at Koenigsberg, where she had gone to visit Queen Louisa of Prussia. The fair and frail form that only a few years previously had been the idol of Madame Récamier's salons,

the world. Her step, previously quick and hurried, became now slow and measured. In company she remained standing, talking at the corner of a chimney, and out of doors she dispensed alike with equipages and lacqueys, going about like a Sister of Charity, and she was admitted everywhere without ceremony.

The first time that Madame de Krudener obtained a sense of her power over the multitude is said to have been at Venice. A beggar-woman had been arrested, and the mob interceded for her. Madame de Krudener, passing in her gondola, also interfered, and she addressed the parties with such effect as to bring about the desired object, whereupon the mob carried her in triumph, shouting, "See the beautiful young lady, who has pity on the sufferings of the poor, and will not allow them to be maltreated." This event produced a great impression upon her. From that day she cultivated the favor of the people; the gondoliers disputed the honor of conveying her to church, and within the portals of the sacred edifice people recommended themselves to her prayers. The progress of events also materially influenced her resolves. After the battle of Jena, she wrote: "Great destinies are being accomplished: keep your eyes open. He who tries the hearts of the humble as well as of the strong, is about to manifest himself to kings as well as to people."

As the prosperity of Napoleon increased, Madame de Krudener withdrew to Geneva, where she made the acquaintance of Empeytas, a minister of the Reformed Church, who, like herself, was imbued with the spirit of mystic ardor as well as of piety. She had at this epoch two children, one of whom, a boy, she sent into Livonia, the other, a girl, she kept near herself.

The days of her predications and missions brow, than to have lived to dishonor her had now arrived. At Heidelberg she visited gray hairs with all the vanities of illuminism the prison for criminals, and dwelt for some and witchcraft. weeks among thieves and assassins. War had massed these personages in a few strong places, and they had, in consequence, become so dangerous that their gaolers were frightened to venture among them. Yet a frail woman was not terrified-it is true that her very fragility was a kind of protection to her. But she had to bear with their raillery against herself and against the Creator of all things. There was, in her own words, a perfect luxury of vice and perdition among them. Strange to say, she met in this gaol a man with whom she had danced in Paris. "Good lady," he said, "do not try to convert me. A society that humbles and prostrates itself before him who steals a crown attests that there is only one thing in this world below, and that is success. To succeed is virtue, to fail is crime." Another took her book out of her hand, and struck her on the head with it. "Get away, old fool," he said; if you were young and pretty, you would not be thinking of God, but of his creature, and now all the nonsense that you talk is for the consolation of your old age and of your worn-out carcase."

These sentimental promenades of Madame de Krudener among gaols and fortresses, her preachings and predictions among the poor and the subversive, and the fame of her proceedings, that spread far and wide in town and country, did not fail to attract the attention of the authorities. The tumult of war saved her for a time. She attempted, on the retreat from Moscow, to reach Berlin, but was obliged to return into Switzerland, the eternal home of the free and of the persecuted, and sometimes of the ungrateful. When news arrived of the battle of Leipzig, "Thank Heaven, thank Heaven, princes and people," she exclaimed, "for having saved you; you have nothing else now to do, porro unum est necessarium, thank Heaven!" She spoke of Alexander as a young hero who joined the energy of a Cæsar to the celestial candor of an apostle, as the elect of Heaven, and her words had an effect that can scarcely be imagined in less impressionable and excitable times. This was, indeed, the moment of Madame de Krudener's greatest triumphs, and better to have died at that time, with the halo of a prophetess round her pale

Madame de Krudener first made acquaintance with the thaumaturgist Jung Stilling at Carlsruhe, in 1814, and her excitable temperament allowed itself at once to be won over by all sorts of strange systems and fantastic theories. Jung Stilling was the son of a peasant, and had himself been brought up as a tailor. Goethe was the first to detect a precocious intelligence in this youth of humble origin, and it was to his having noticed him that he was indebted for the sympathy of the world. But these manifestations of interest awakened new ambitions: the tailoring was given up for doctoring, and Jung Stilling became a physician without the trouble of studying the science or passing an examination in order to obtain a degree. He improvised the latter as a more easy process. His business consisted in effecting cures by mystical means and by supernatural incantations, of which he alone possessed the secret. Such is the natural love for quackery and humbug, that crowds hastened to the empiric. He more particularly addicted himself to the cure of the eyes, and here he performed miracles. All those upon whom he operated were to recover their sight, and if they did not do so it was because they were destined to remain blind! What is still more strange is, that this man who practised medicine without a diploma, this dreamer, quack, and cheat, who had always lived without the bounds of reality, was appointed professor of political economy! Needless to say that he was most profoundly ignorant of the merest elements of the science that he was appointed to teach; but Europe was at that epoch so upset by the horrors of war, that a small German university did not look too close to its appointments.

Jung Stilling not only managed, however, to get through his course of political economy with credit to himself, but he found time, while he was disseminating his absurd theories of the development of wealth and the increase of human happiness, to indite a whole host of frightful romances. Finding, however, that this failed to procure the needful, he changed his tactics-he had already experienced how much could be done by pretensions to the mystical-and he assumed to have given himself up to a profound study

of the occult sciences, the elements of which times she was in want of money, and then he at the same time developed in his "The- when she could get a remittance she would ory of Spirits and Scenes of the Invisible divide it with the poor and the needy. Her World." tribulations and anxieties were truly excessive. She was getting old, and at open war with all the police of Europe; the nomade had to raise her tent as soon as it was pitched wherever she went. At length she found refuge at the house of her son-in-law, Baron de Berckheim, who lived in the environs of Riga.

But it was not without a pang that she thus resigned herself to a retired life. She said that if the Creator thus humiliated her, it was because he could no longer be glorified by her. It was thus that she wrote to Empeytas, in 1820: "God permits lassitude to creep over its elect, so that they may know of how little import is their strength and renown to him. He has shown to me also within these few days that he has no longer any need of my poor services. My head bends down upon my chest, my arms fall by my side, and my step, which formerly was as a spring towards an object to be attained, is now slow and painful. O my friend! when the terrible hour shall sound, with what fright shall I answer the appeal! It is in vain that I attempt to compare my good and bad days disseminated over the earth, in vain that I attempt to draw conclusions: there is no fruit-alas! no fruit! I began life as a frivolous and coquettish woman, and after a brief but short martyrdom, I finish as a woman without courage and complaining."

Such is the man whom, unfortunately, an educated, refined, and latterly a pious person like Madame de Krudener allowed herself to be influenced by. The apparitions of a supernatural world were the inexhaustible theme of their conversation, and the too credulous neophyte listened to all the extravagances of this arch-impostor as if they had been words of the Gospel: they prayed together, and they summoned spirits to appear before them. All the false prophets and cheats that at that epoch abounded in Alsatia, in Franconia, in Switzerland, and in Bavaria, congregated around this madman, who pretended to be in immediate communication with the Deity. Madame de Krudener found herself irretrievably mixed up with these mock propagandists. This was all that was wanting to deliver her over to her enemies, who were not few in number, and who were jealous of her labors and success among the poor, the imprisoned, and the afflicted, but who, so long as she had persevered, backed by a steady piety and a sound faith, had found it impossible to annoy her. Now nothing was easier: she had given up true religion for imposture; she had associated herself with a parcel of notorious cheats; she was denounced as being herself a deceiver, as subversive, infidel, and impiShe who had been the friend of Alexander and the beloved of the people, was ridiculed and laughed at, and the last epoch M. de Sternberg relates having seen this of her life—the era of her disgrace-was remarkable woman in her retirement. “It fairly entered upon. Her travels were now was," he relates, " a fine summer's evening, prosecuted with a commissary of police in the when I was walking along the banks of the carriage and a gendarme at each door-sad river, that I saw an open carriage pass by, and painful perigrinations, yet still more or in which an old lady, in a dress of gray silk, less triumphal, for the people hurried wher- was seated by the side of a young man. ever she was, and pressed around the car- Without knowing that it was Madame de riage of the poor persecuted lady. Thus it Krudener, I experienced a singular impreswas that she was hurried from one frontier sion at the sight of this person. A moment to another. No German state would allow afterwards the carriage stopped, and the old her to remain upon its territory: nowhere lady got down, leaning upon the arm of her could she find an asylum. On the threshold cavalier. Although at a short distance, of every hostelry she was met by a police I soon understood why she had thus got officer, who at once bade her pass on; and down. There was a group of girls close by the miserable woman, worn out with fatigue on the banks of the river, busy washing and often ill, had no alternative but to get clothes, and Madame de Krudener, perceivup again into her carriage, and to pursue ing them, could not resist the temptation of the course of her anxious migrations. Some- getting down and preaching something to

ous.

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »