Camille.
From the French of Alfred de Musset.
[Alfred de Musset was born in the middle of old Paris, in the year 1810. Musset is the Byron of the French; but at the age when Byron was playing cricket in the grounds of Harrow, Alfred and his brother Paul were poring day and night over old romances, and dressing themselves up as knights and robbers, to represent the characters of whom they read. At nineteen he began to write, and, unlike Byron, his first book of poems was a complete success. At twenty-three he went to Italy, in the capacity of George Sand's private secretary, fell passionately in love with her, was jilted, and returned home broken-hearted. This, however, did not prevent him from falling in love, and out again, like Byron, at constant intervals throughout his life, and celebrating the event in verses infinitely sweet and bitter. From Louis Philippe, who had been his school-fellow, he received the post of Librarian to the Minister of the Interior, which, however, he lost at the Revolution of 1848. In 1852 he was elected to the French Academy; but, though only forty-two, his health was already breaking. Like Byron, who loved to write at midnight with a glass of gin-and-water at his elbow, Musset used to prime himself with draughts of the still deadlier absinthe. He sank, and died in May, 1857, leaving the greatest name of all French poets except Victor Hugo, and a reputation as a writer of prose stories which may be very fairly estimated by the specimen which follows—the charming little story of "Camille."]
I.
HE Chevalier des Arcis was a cavalry officer who, having quitted the service in 1760, while still young, retired to a country house near Mans. Shortly after, he married the daughter of a retired merchant who lived in the neighbourhood, and this marriage appeared for a time to be an exceedingly happy one. Cécile's relatives were worthy folk who, enriched by means of hard work, were now, in their latter years, enjoying a continual Sunday. The Chevalier, weary of the artificial manners of Versailles, entered gladly into their simple pleasures. Cécile had an excellent uncle, named Giraud, who had been a master-bricklayer, but had risen by degrees to the position of architect, and now owned considerable property. The Chevalier's house (which was named Chardonneux) was much to Giraud's taste, and he was there a frequent and ever welcome visitor.
By and by a lovely little girl was born to the Chevalier and Cécile, and great at first was the jubilation of the parents. But a painful shock was in store for them. They soon made the terrible discovery that their little Camille was deaf, and, consequently, also dumb!
II.
The mother's first thought was of cure, but this hope was reluctantly abandoned no cure could be found. At the time of which we are writing, there existed a pitiless prejudice against those poor creatures whom we style deaf mutes. A few noble spirits, it is true, had protested against this barbarity. A Spanish monk of the sixteenth century was the first to devise means of teaching the dumb to speak without words—a thing until then deemed impossible. His example had been followed at different times in Italy, England, and France, by Bonnet, Wallis, Bulwer, and Van Helmont, and a little good had been done here and there. Still, however, even at Paris, deaf mutes were generally regarded as beings set apart, marked with the brand of Divine displeasure. Deprived of speech, the power of thought was denied them, and they inspired more horror than pity.
A dark shadow crept over the happiness of Camille's parents. A sudden, silent estrangement—worse than divorce, crueller than death—grew up between them. For the mother passionately loved her afflicted child, while the Chevalier, despite all the efforts prompted by his kind heart, could not overcome the repugnance with which her affliction affected him.
The mother spoke to her child by signs, and she alone could make herself understood. Every other inmate of the house, even her father, was a stranger to Camille. The mother of Madame des Arcis—a woman of no tact—never ceased to deplore loudly the misfortune that had befallen her daughter and son-in-law. "Better that she had never been born!" she exclaimed one day.
