The Tragic Comedians | Page 6

me: at a supper at Alvan's table the other night, the talk
happened to be of a modern Caesar, which led to the real one, and from
him to "Plutarch's Pompeius," as Alvan called him; and then he said of
him what you have just said, absolutely the same down to the allusion
to the bite. I assure you. And you have numbers of little phrases in
common: you are partners in aphorisms: Barriers are for those who
cannot fly: that is Alvan's. I could multiply them if I could remember;
they struck me as you spoke.'
'I must be a shameless plagiarist,' said Clotilde.
'Or he,' said Count Kollin.
It is here the place of the Chorus to state that these: ideas were in the air
at the time; sparks of the Vulcanic smithy at work in politics and
pervading literature: which both Alvan and Clotilde might catch and
give out as their own, in the honest belief that the epigram was, original
to them. They were not members of a country where literature is
confined to its little paddock, without, influence on the larger field (part
lawn, part marsh) of the social world: they were readers in sympathetic
action with thinkers and literary artists. Their saying in common,
'Plutarch's Pompeius,' may be traceable to a reading of some
professorial article on the common portrait-painting of the sage of
Chaeroneia. The dainty savageness in the 'bite' Plutarch mentions,
evidently struck on a similarity of tastes in both, as it has done with
others. And in regard to Caesar, Clotilde thought much of Caesar; she
had often wished that Caesar (for the additional pleasure in thinking of
him) had been endowed with the beauty of his rival: one or two of
Plutarch's touches upon the earlier history of Pompeius had netted her
fancy, faintly (your generosity must be equal to hearing it) stung her
blood; she liked the man; and if he had not been beaten in the end, she
would have preferred him femininely. His name was not written
Pompey to her, as in English, to sound absurd: it was a note of grandeur
befitting great and lamentable fortunes, which the young lady declined

to share solely because of her attraction to the victor, her compulsion to
render unto the victor the sunflower's homage. She rendered it as a
slave: the splendid man beloved to ecstasy by the flower of Roman
women was her natural choice.
Alvan could not be even a Caesar in person, he was a Jew. Still a Jew
of whom Count Kollin spoke so warmly must be exceptional, and of
the exceptional she dreamed. He might have the head of a Caesar. She
imagined a huge head, the cauldron of a boiling brain, anything but
bright to the eye, like a pot always on the fire, black, greasy, encrusted,
unkempt: the head of a malicious tremendous dwarf. Her hungry
inquiries in a city where Alvan was well known, brought her full
information of one who enjoyed a highly convivial reputation besides
the influence of his political leadership; but no description of his aspect
accompanied it, for where he was nightly to be met somewhere about
the city, none thought of describing him, and she did not push that
question because she had sketched him for herself, and rather wished,
the more she heard of his genius, to keep him repulsive. It appeared that
his bravery was as well proved as his genius, and a brilliant instance of
it had been given in the city not long since. He had her ideas, and he
won multitudes with them: he was a talker, a writer, and an orator; and
he was learned, while she could not pretend either to learning or to a
flow of rhetoric. She could prattle deliciously, at times pointedly,
relying on her intuition to tell her more than we get from books, and on
her sweet impudence for a richer original strain. She began to
appreciate now a reputation for profound acquirements. Learned
professors of jurisprudence and history were as enthusiastic for Alvan
in their way as Count Kollin. She heard things related of Alvan by the
underbreath. That circle below her own, the literary and artistic,
idolized him; his talk, his classic breakfasts and suppers, his
undisguised ambition, his indomitable energy, his dauntlessness and
sway over her sex, were subjects of eulogy all round her; and she heard
of an enamoured baroness. No one blamed Alvan. He had shown his
chivalrous valour in defending her. The baroness was not a young
woman, and she was a hardbound Blue. She had been the first to
discover the prodigy, and had pruned, corrected, and published him; he
was one of her political works, promising to be the most successful. An

old affair apparently; but the association