PROSPER MERIMEE'S " INCONNUE."* " DANS l'amour ily a toujours
us qui embrasse et un qui tend la joue," is one of many truthful but sceptical sayings which the French seem to have a peculiar faculty for coining, perhaps because they have made such a special study of love in all its phases, with all its frailty and incompleteness. It is rarely that two natures are completely adapted to each other, rarely that one does not give the most and receive the least. After reading An Author's Love, which is a series of letters in answer to Prosper Merimee's Lettres d use Incannue, it is natural to conclude that of the two correspondents, the one who loved most, consequently suffered most, was the " Inconnue," or anti fiminin of Merimee, as he christened her at the outset of their friendship. The impression left after reading the whole correspondence, is that she would have never loved as she did had she not met Merimee, but that he might have loved as strongly, if not so enduringly, had he never met her.
Her whole heart and interest are completely given to the man she has chosen for her friend, he has entirely entered into her spiritual life and become inseparable from it, from the time they meet until the hour of his death (a space of some thirty years)—the sentiment he has inspired strengthening and increasing, and absorbing her whole thoughts. And he— yes, he has loved her well—appreciated her with the exercised appreciation of a man of the world and a connoisseur in feminine charm and intellect, an appreciation tinged with a scepticism, rather inherent than acquired, that seems to have been his greatest strength and weakness at the same time. Or perhaps the apparent difference in their affection resulted principally from the different form and degree that love necessarily takes in the opposite sexes. It is so true that what is an episode in the life of a man often possesses a woman's whole history. Merimee had his role of honme de lettres, Senator, Academician, to fulfil. His mind was too well balanced to allow a feminine interest to usurp a disproportionate share of his life and thoughts. And yet at one point of his friend- ship with the " Inconnue," he was moved to make certain reflections contrary to his nature, to his instinctive and adopted manner of thought, merely because the intensity of a woman's love had stirred certain unrevealed or wilfully ignored fibres of his spiritual nature. We occasionally meet people in the world who think that they have put aside all meta- physical and psychical speculations and questionings, and have settled down into a placid materialism. And we know that some day a new sentiment may suddenly break into their life, bringing with it new and unexpected questionings that spring from sources which no principles of materialism will satis- factorily explain. This reflection suggests itself to the mind on reading such a passage as the following, which occurs in one of Merimee's letters, written during an early period of his attachment to the " Inconnue :"—
" Vous me demandez si je crois a rime. Pm trop. Cependant, en reflechissant certaines chores, je trouve us argument en favour de cotta hypothese,—le voici : Comment deux substances inanimes pourraient-elles dormer et recevoir une sensation par une reunion, qui serait insipid° 139.128 l'idee qu'on y attache ? Voila use phrase hien pedantesque pour dire quo lorsque deux gem qui s'aiment s'embrassent, its sentent entre chose quo lorsqu on balm le satin le plus doux."
The whole series of his letters has been made a great deal of, with justice; but for human interest they cannot compare
with those of his correspondent. They always remain the letters of a litterateur, and arc principally interesting from that point of view. The identity of the " Inconnue " was
always so surrounded by mystery, that her actual existence was doubted by many, who supposed the letters to be addressed to an imaginary correspondent. But no one with a grain of discernment could read the answers to these letters without feeling and knowing that the " Inconnue " was a real—too real—living, loving human being. The real truth is, that she was an Englishwoman moving in the highest grade of society. lferimee accuses her at times of coldness and inflexibility; but if she really possessed these failings, or displayed them in her relations with him, she must have been the principal sufferer, judging by some of her letters written at a period when the whole happiness of their mutual attachment seems to have been embittered and destroyed by differences for which he makes her responsible. Every line expresses the
• An Author's Lore. ThelJnpublished Letters of Prosper MdrimEe's" inoonnne." London : Macmillan and Co. wretched sense of discord which oppresses her. Fortunately, this state of things does not last long, and is succeeded by a period of happiness in which mutual understanding and sympathy reach- their climax. Of course, all her letters are not devoted to discussing their sentiments for each other. Many of them are full of delightful descriptions, original reflections, often bright and witty, more frequently deeply earnest and thoughtful. They show her to be a woman possessed of a most cultivated and brilliant mind, enthusiastic yet discriminating, free from the slightest taint of pedantry or the affectation and self-consciousness which so often spoil the intellectual woman of the world. The " Inconnue" was married shortly after making the acquaintance of Merimee, and was left a widow two years later.
It is a puzzle to those who realise the intensity of their attachment, why they did not settle on some means of spending more of their lives together. There is something sadly un- satisfactory in the constant separations, the rare meetings and snatches of a joy which in her case approaches ecstasy. And when all is about to end, when his failing health fore- shadows his approaching death, then it is that all the tenderness of her woman's nature, all the accumulated love of nearly thirty years, breaks forth in pitiful remonstrance and protestation. " Que faut-il faire ?" he writes. " Je n'en sais rien, mais souvent j'ai grand desir que cela finisse."
"0 mon ami," she answers, "do you know what that means to me ? So often now thoughts come to me which I dare not put in words, but they haunt me after reading that you suffer, that you make no progress, that you grow worse; and now you tell me this, that you wish the end might come. Oh, love, love, love, I could not live without you ! Do you know what the world would be for me with you not here ? A leaden sky, with stars and moon and sun gone out ; flowers with- out scent or colour, trees bare of foliage, birds with no note of song, all glad things turned to mocking memories ; days of utter weariness, with longing, aching arms stretched out to empty space ; a heart starved and hungry, with only stones for food ; nights when lying dreams would cheat me to believe that once again you clasped me in a warm, living embrace, only that when the waking came my sense of loss might grow anew with double bitterness ! Surely hell has no greater torture than a heart can feel when its other better, dearer self is taken, and it is left with all the tired restlessness and weary, poisoned, passionate pain. If we could but go together, you and I, hand in hand through the dark valley and down into the deep, dark waters which lead to the great unknown ! Dear God, was it good to decree this awful, final trial of tearing asunder lives grown to one, of wrenching nerves and fibres joined and twined together with years of daily loving sympathy, only that one may go forth bruised and bleeding to a new, uncomprehended life all solitary, while the other is left to live on the old existence with all its charm crushed out and ended ? It is so hard, so terribly hard, to believe the words spoken by a voice never yet heard, as it says to the first, Be not afraid, for I am with you,' and to the other, Weep not, I will comfort you.' We know so well the voice we have loved and lived with, and feel so certain that it understands our every want, that if we might only go together we must be happy, whatever strange, new thing be waiting for us, but this grave, far-off, unseen One who promises, Him we cannot really know, and we fear to meet Him all alone. No, I cannot, will not, live without you. Every night will I pray that if there be a God in heaven merciful and loving, let him take me first, that I may never know the irremediable loss of losing you. I could not bear the torture. I should go mad with grief, and do some frantic, senseless thing far better left undone. No, you must not die before me ; it cannot, shall not be."
A little less than two years after this letter, Merimee died. And after following the whole history as far as is possible through a frequently interrupted correspondence, it is im- possible to answer the question which she puts in one of her letters, or to know how she would have answered it herself when all was over, and the joys and sorrows of her own life could be placed side by side :— " I have been wondering this morning," she writes, "which were the most to be envied, people with strong capacities for enjoyment, and the corresponding powers of suffering; or people of a stolid phlegmatic nature, feeling neither joy nor sorrow very keenly, taking things as they come, not eating their hearts out with intense anticipation, or exhausting them with devouring possession, or feeling them ache beyond bearing with the Weltschmera which Goethe tells us of in such comprehensive words,—that world-weariness for which he tried every known cure, yet which cursed so large a part of his life ? The natural disposi- tion of man is to be happy, and if one thing fails in giving him happiness he tries another; only some do this in a calm, methodical way, with no expense of heart's blood and the wine of life; while others drain both at one mad straining venture to compel fate to slake their burning thirst, no matter what may be the consequences."
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