The Lucile Project

Part I, Canto IV - Canto VI
1860 Chapman & Hall / Ticknor & Fields
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II
Eugene de Luvois was a man who, in part
From strong physical health, and that vigour of heart
Which physical health gives, and partly, perchance,
From a generous vanity native to France,
Threw himself, heart and soul, into all that allured
Or engaged his sensations; nor ever endured
To relinquish to failure whate'er he began,
Or accept any rank, save the foremost. A man
Of action by nature, he might have, no doubt,
Been in some sense a great man, had life but laid out
Any great field of action for him, or conceded
To action a really great aim, such as needed
Faith, patience, self-sacrifice.
-------------------But, on the whole,
From circumstance partly beyond his control,
His life was of trifles made up, and he lived
In a world of frivolities. Still he contrived
The trifles, to which he was wedded, to dower
With so much of his own individual power
(And mere pastime to him was so keen a pursuit).
That these trifles seem'd such as you scarce could impute
To a trifler.
-----------Both he and Lord Alfred had been
Men of pleasure: but men's pleasant vices, which, seen
In Alfred, appear'd, from the light languid mood
Of soft unconcern with which these were pursued,
As amiable foibles, by strange involution,
In Eugene, from their earnest, intense prosecution.
Appear'd almost criminal.
----------------------Nevertheless,
What in him gave to vice, from its pathos and stress,
A sort of malignity, might have perchance
Had the object been changed by transposed circumstance,
Given vigour to virtue. And therefore, indeed,
Had his lite been allied to some fix'd moral creed,
In the practice and forms of a rigid, severe,
And ascetic religion, he might have come near
To each saint in that calendar which he no spurn'd.
In its orbit, however, his intellect turn'd
On a circle so narrow'd as quite to exclude
A spacious humanity. Therefore, both crude
And harsh his religion would ever have been,
As shallow, presumptuous, narrow, and keen,
Was the trite irreligion which now he display'd.
It depended alone upon chance to have made
Persecutor of this man, or martyr. For, closed
In the man, lurk'd two natures the world deems opposed,
A Savonarola's, a Calvin's, alike
Unperceived by himself. It was in him to strike
At whatever the object he sought to attain,
Bold as Brutus, relentless as Philip of Spain,
And undaunted to march, in behalf of his brothers,
To the stake, or to light it, remorseless, for others.
The want of his lite was the great want, in fact,
Of a principle, less than of power to act
Upon principle. Life without one living truth!
To the sacred political creed of his youth
The century which he was born to denied
All realisation. Its generous pride
To degenerate protest on all things was sunk;
Its principles, each to a prejudice shrunk.
And thus from his youth he had lived, in constrain'd
Vain resistance, opposed to the race that then reign'd
In the land of his birth, and from this cause alone
Exiled from his due sphere of action, and thrown
Into reckless inertness , whence, early possess'd
Of inherited wealth, he had learn'd to invest
Both his wealth and those passions wealth frees from the cage
Which penury locks, in each vice of an age
All the virtues of which, by the creed he revered,
Were to him illegitimate.
-------------------Thus, he appear'd
Neither Brutus nor Philip in action and deed,
Neither Calvin nor Savonarola in creed,
But that which the world chose to have him appear,-
The frivolous tyrant of Fashion, a mere
Reformer in coats, cards, and carriages! Still
'Twas this vigour of nature, and tension of will
Whence his love for Lucile to such passion grown.
The moment in which with his nature her own
Into contact had come, the intense life in her,
The tenacious embrace of her strong character,
Had seized and possess'd what in him was akin
To the powers within her; and still, as within
Her loftier, larger, more luminous nature,
These powers assumed greater glory and stature,
Her influence over the mind of Eugene
Was not only strong, but so strong as to strain
All his own to a loftier limit.
-------------------------And so
His whole being seem'd to cling to her, as though
He divined that, in some unaccountable way,
His happier destinies secretly lay
In the light of her dark eyes. And still, in be mind,
To the anguish of losing the woman was join'd
The terror of missing his life's destination,
Of which, as in mystical representation,
The love of the woman, whose aspect benign
Guided, starlike, his soul seem'd the symbol and sign.
For he felt, if the light of that star it should miss,
That there lurk'd in his nature, conceal'd, an abyss
Into which all the current of being might roll,
Devastating a life, and submerging a soul.
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IX
--------------------Before he relinquish'd
His unconscious employment, that light was extinguish'd.
Wheels, at last, from the inn door aroused him. He ran
Down the stairs; reach'd the entrance. An old stableman
Was lighting his pipe in the doorway alone.
Down the mountam, that moment, a carriage was gone.
He could hear it, already too distant to see.
He turn'd to the groom there -
----------------------'Madame est parti'.
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X
He sprang from the doorstep; he rush'd on; bat whither
He knew not - on, into the dark cloudy weather-
The midnight-the mountains-on, over the shelf
Of the precipice-on, still-away from himself!
...
A change had pass'd o'er him; an angry remorse
Of his own frantic failure and error had marr'd
Such a refuge for ever. The future seem'd barr'd
By the corpse of a dead hope o'er which he must tread
To attain it. He realised then all the dread
Conditions which go to a life without faith.
The sole unseen fact he believed in was death.
His soul, roused to life by a great human need,
Now hunger'd and thirsted. What had he to feed
Her hunger and thirst on? That wise mother, France,
Had left to her spoil'd child of outgrown romance
Not a toy yet unbroken.
-----------------From college to college
She had gorged him crop full on her dead Tree of Knowledge;
But the lost Tree of Life - still the cherubim's sword
Fenced it from her false Edens. Belief was a word
To him, not a fact. He yet clung by a name
To a dynasty fallen for ever. He came
Of an old princely house, true through change to the race
And the sword of Saint Louis -a faith 'twere disgrace
To relinquish, and folly to live for! Nor less
Was his ancient religion (once potent to bless
Or to ban; and the crozier his ancestors kneel'd
To adore, when they fought for the Cross, in hard field
With the Crescent) become, ere it reach'd him, tradition;
A mere faded badge of a social position;
A thing to retain and say nothing about,
Lest, if used, it should draw degradation from doubt.
Thus, the first time he sought them, the creeds of his youth
Wholly fail'd the strong needs of his manhood, in truth!
And beyond them, what region of refuge? What field
For employment, this civilized age, did it yield,
In that civilized land? or to thought? or to action?
Blind deliriums, bewilder'd and endless distraction!
Not even a desert, not even the cell
Of a hermit to flee to, wherein he might quell
The wild devil-instincts which now, unreprest,
Ran riot thro' that ruin'd world in his breast.
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XXI [only final line here]
Who can answer where any road leads?
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XXII [Long verse based closely on a poem of Musset's]

Part I, Canto IV: Verse VII - final two lines deleted.

Part I, Canto IV: Verse XV - in line two, "of the Countess" ischanged to "of Lucile"

Part I, Canto V: no changes noted

Part I, Canto VI: in dialogue Verses IV-V, "The Countess" is changed to "Lucile" and "The Duke" to "Luvois"

Part I Canto IV Verse II
Eugene de Luvois was a man who, in part
From strong physical health, and that vigour of heart
Which physical health gives, and partly, perchance,
From a generous vanity native to France,
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With the heart of a hunter, whatever the quarry,
Pursued it, too hotly impatient to tarry
Or turn, till he took it. His trophies were trifles:
But trifler he was not. When rose leaves it rifles,
No less than when oak-trees it ruins, the wind
Its pleasure pursues with impetuous mind.
Both Eugene de Luvois and Lord Alfred had been
Men of pleasure: but men's pleasant vices, which, seen
Floating faint, in the sunshine of Alfred's soft mood,
Seem'd amiable foibles, by Luvois pursued
With impetuous passion, seemed semi-Satanic.
Half-pleased you see brooks play with pebbles ; in panic
You watch them whirl'd down by the torrent.
-------------------In truth,
To the sacred political creed of his youth
The century which he was born to denied
All realisation. Its generous pride
To degenerate protest on all things was sunk;
Its principles, each to a prejudice shrunk.
Down the path of a life that led nowhere he trod,
Where his whims were his guides, and his will was his god,
And his pastime his purpose.
----------------From boyhood possess'd
Of inherited wealth, he had learn'd to invest
Both his wealth and those passions wealth frees from the cage
Which penury locks, in each vice of an age
All the virtues of which, by the creed he revered,
Were to him illegitimate.
--------------------Thus, he appear'd
To the world what the world chose to have him appear,-
The frivolous tyrant of Fashion, a mere
Reformer in coats, cards, and carriages! Still
'Twas this vigour of nature, and tension of will,
That found for the first time-perchance for the last-
In Lucile what they lacked yet to free from the Past
Force, and faith, in the Future.
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--------------------And so, in his mind,
To the anguish of losing the woman was join'd
The terror of missing his life's destination,
Which in her had its mystical representation.
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IX
------------------Before he relinquish'd
His unconscious employment, that light was extinguish'd.
Wheels, at last, from the inn door aroused him. He ran
Down the stairs; reach'd the door-just to see her depart.
Down the mountain the carriage was speeding.
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X
------------------------His heart
Pealed the knell of its last hope. He rush'd on; but whither
He knew not-on, into the dark cloudy weather-
The midnight-the mountains-on, over the shelf
Of the precipice-on, still-away from himself!
...
A change had pass'd o'er him; an angry remorse
Of his own frantic failure and error had marr'd
Such a refuge for ever. The future seem'd barr'd
By the corpse of a dead hope o'er which he must tread
To attain it. Life's wilderness round him was spread.
What clue there to cling by?
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----------------He clung by a name
To a dynasty fallen for ever. He cam
e Of an old princely house, true through change to the race
And the sword of Saint Louis-a faith 'twere disgrace
To relinquish, and folly to live for! Nor less
Was his ancient religion (once potent to bless
Or to ban; and the crozier his ancestors kneel'd
To adore, when they fought for the Cross, in hard field
With the Crescent) become, ere it reach'd him, tradition;
A. mere faded badge of a social position;
A thing to retain and say nothing about,
Lest, if used, it should draw degradation from doubt.
Thus, the first time he sought them, the creeds of his youth
Wholly fail'd the strong needs of his manhood, in truth!
And beyond them, what region of refuge? what field
For employment, this civilized age, did it yield,
In that civilized land? or to thought? or to action?
Blind deliriums, bewilder'd and endless distraction!
Not even a desert, not even the cell
Of a hermit to flee to, wherein he might quell
The wild devil-instincts which now, unreprest,
Ran riot through that ruin'd world in his breast.
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XXI: [final line deleted]
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1860 XXII deleted entirely.