The Tragic Comedians | Page 9

while for the surprise of learning that
the gentleman so unlike a Jew was Alvan; and she was prepared to
express her recordation of the circumstance in her diary with phrases of
very eminent surprise. Necessarily it would be the greatest of surprises.
The three, this man and his two of the tribe, upon whom Clotilde's
attention centred, with a comparison in her mind too sacred to be other
than profane (comparisons will thrust themselves on minds disordered),
dropped to the cushions of the double-seated sofa, by one side of which
she cowered over her wool-work, willing to dwindle to a pin's head if
her insignificance might enable her to hear the words of the speaker. He
pursued his talk: there was little danger of not hearing him. There was
only the danger of feeling too deeply the spell of his voice. His voice
had the mellow fulness of the clarionet. But for the subject, she could
have fancied a noontide piping of great Pan by the sedges. She had
never heard a continuous monologue so musical, so varied in music,
amply flowing, vivacious, interwovenly the brook, the stream, the
torrent: a perfect natural orchestra in a single instrument. He had notes
less pastorally imageable, notes that fired the blood, with the ranging of
his theme. The subject became clearer to her subjugated wits, until the
mental vivacity he roused on certain impetuous phrases of assertion
caused her pride to waken up and rebel as she took a glance at herself,
remembering that she likewise was a thinker, deemed in her society an
original thinker, an intrepid thinker and talker, not so very much
beneath this man in audacity of brain, it might be. He kindled her thus,
and the close-shut but expanded and knew the fretting desire to breathe
out the secret within it, and be appreciated in turn.
The young flower of her sex burned to speak, to deliver an opinion. She
was unaccustomed to yield a fascinated ear. She was accustomed rather
to dictate and be the victorious performer, and though now she was not

anxious to occupy the pulpit--being too strictly bred to wish for a post
publicly in any of the rostra--and meant still less to dispossess the
present speaker of the place he filled so well, she yearned to join him:
and as that could not be done by a stranger approving, she panted to
dissent. A young lady cannot so well say to an unknown gentleman:
'You have spoken truly, sir,' as, 'That is false!' for to speak in the former
case would be gratuitous, and in the latter she is excused by the moral
warmth provoking her. Further, dissent rings out finely, and approval is
a feeble murmur--a poor introduction of oneself. Her moral warmth
was ready and waiting for the instigating subject, but of course she was
unconscious of the goad within. Excitement wafted her out of herself,
as we say, or out of the conventional vessel into the waves of her
troubled nature. He had not yet given her an opportunity for dissenting;
she was compelled to agree, dragged at his chariot-wheels in headlong
agreement.
His theme was Action; the political advantages of Action; and he
illustrated his view with historical examples, to the credit of the French,
the temporary discredit of the German and English races, who tend to
compromise instead. Of the English he spoke as of a power extinct, a
people 'gone to fat,' who have gained their end in a hoard of gold and
shut the door upon bandit ideas. Action means life to the soul as to the
body. Compromise is virtual death: it is the pact between cowardice
and comfort under the title of expediency. So do we gather dead matter
about us. So are we gradually self-stifled, corrupt. The war with evil in
every form must be incessant; we cannot have peace. Let then our joy
be in war: in uncompromising Action, which need not be the less a
sagacious conduct of the war . . . . Action energizes men's brains,
generates grander capacities, provokes greatness of soul between
enemies, and is the guarantee of positive conquest for the benefit of our
species. To doubt that, is to doubt of good being to be had for the
seeking. He drew pictures of the healthy Rome when turbulent, the
doomed quiescent. Rome struggling grasped the world. Rome stagnant
invited Goth and Vandal. So forth: alliterative antitheses of the
accustomed pamphleteer. At last her chance arrived.
His opposition sketch of Inaction was refreshed by an analysis of the

character of Hamlet. Then he reverted to Hamlet's promising youth.
How brilliantly endowed was the Prince of Denmark in the beginning!
'Mad from the first!' cried Clotilde.
She produced an effect not unlike that of a sudden crack