Old Love Stories Retold | Page 4

no laugh against his faithful little
Mathilde. It is not at Mathilde he laughs, but at the precious little
blue-stocking, who freshened the last months of his life with a final
infatuation--that still unidentified "Camille Selden" whom he playfully
called "la Mouche."
"La Mouche," naturally, had a very poor opinion of Madame Heine,
and you need not be a cynic to enjoy this passage with which she opens
her famous remembrances of "The Last Days of Heinrich Heine":
"When I first saw Heinrich Heine he lived on the fifth floor of a house
situated on the Avenue Matignon, not far from the Rond-Point of the
Champs-Elysees. His windows, overlooking the avenue, opened on a
narrow balcony, covered in hot weather with a striped linen awning,
such as appears in front of small cafes. The apartments consisted of
three or four rooms--the dining-room and two rooms used by the
master and the mistress of the house. A very low couch, behind a
screen encased in wall-paper, several chairs, and opposite the door a
walnut-wood secretary, formed the entire furniture of the invalid's
chamber. I nearly forgot to mention two framed engravings, dated from
the early years of Louis Philippe's reign--the 'Reapers' and the
'Fisherman,' after Leopold Robert. So far the arrangements of the rooms
evidenced no trace of a woman's presence, which showed itself in the
adjoining chamber by a display of imitation lace, lined with transparent
yellow muslin, and a corner-cupboard covered with brown velvet, and
more especially by a full-length portrait, placed in a good light, of Mme.
Heine, with dress and hair as worn in her youth--a low-necked black
bodice, and bands of hair plastered down her cheeks--a style in the
fashion of about 1840.
"She by no means realized my ideal Mme. Heine. I had fancied her
refined, elegant, languishing, with a pale, earnest face, animated by
large, perfidious, velvety eyes. I saw, instead, a homely, dark, stout

lady, with a high colour and a jovial countenance, a person of whom
you would say she required plenty of exercise in the open air. What a
painful contrast between the robust woman and the pale, dying man,
who, with one foot already in the grave, summoned sufficient energy to
earn not only enough for the daily bread, but money besides to
purchase beautiful dresses. The melancholy jests, which obliging
biographers constantly represent as flashes of wit from a husband too
much in love not to be profuse, never deluded anybody who visited that
home. It is absurd to transform Mme. Heine into an idyllic character,
whilst the poet himself never dreamed of representing her in that guise.
Why poetize at the expense of truth?--especially when truth brings
more honour to the poet's memory."
One is sorry that Heine has not risen again to enjoy this. One can easily
picture his reading it and, turning tenderly to his "Treasure," his
"Heart's Joy," with that everlasting boy's look on his face, saying:
"Never mind, Damschen. We know, don't we? They think they know,
but we know." And with what a terrible snarl he would say, "My ideal
Mme. Heine!"
"My ideal Mme. Heine!" No doubt "la Mouche" thought she might
have been that, had all the circumstances been different, had Heine not
already been married for years and had he not been a dying man. We
may be quite sure what Heine would have thought of the matter, and
quite sure what she was to him. Mathilde, we know, was unhappy
about the visits of the smart young lady who talked Shakespeare and
the musical glasses so glibly, and who held her husband's hand as he
lay on his mattress-grave, and wore a general air of providing him with
that intellectual companionship which was so painfully lacking in his
home. Yet we who know the whole story, and know her husband far
better than she, know how little she really had to fear from the visits of
"Camille Selden." To Heine "la Mouche" was merely a brilliant flower,
with the dew of youth upon her. His gloomy room lit up as she entered,
and smelled sweet of her young womanhood hours after she had gone.
But "the ideal Mme. Heine"? No! Heine had found his real Mme. Heine,
the woman who had been faithful to him for years, had faced poverty
and calamity with him, and had nursed him with laughing patience, day

in and day out, for years. Heine had good reason for knowing how "the
ideal Mme. Heine" would have treated him under such circumstances;
for little bas-bleue "Mouche" had only to have a bad cold to stay away
from the bedside of her hero, though she knew how he was counting
the minutes to her coming, in the nervous, hysterical fashion of the
invalid. One of his bitterest letters