Catherine blum, p.1
CATHERINE BLUM, page 1
CATHERINE BLUM
Translated by Alfred Allinson
First published in 1854, this novel is located in Villers-Cotterêts, Dumas’ home town. Set in 1829, the principal characters are foresters and the wife and niece of one of the head keepers. Dumas had no collaborator for this work ; although it was inspired by German dramatist August Wilhelm Iffland’s Die Jaeger.
The novel introduces William Watrin, the chief game warden of the Duke of Orleans, and Marianne, who have a son, Bernard. However, they also raise Catherine, daughter of Rose Watrin, sister of William, and a wounded German prisoner, who was rescued by the family in 1808. Bernard and Catherine love each other, first as a brother and sister, then as lovers. But a jealous rival plots to wreck the proposed marriage…
The main square in Villers-Cotterêts, with a statue of Dumas
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
August Wilhelm Iffland, whose play ‘Die Jäger’ inspired this novel
INTRODUCTION.
ALEXANDRE DUMAS is never more charming than when, having some simple story to tell, for which it suits his purpose to find a setting amongst the rustic scenes of his youth, he takes his readers by the hand, and chatting at his ease, leisurely leads them in fancy over the fields, across the stream, and into the woods of Villers-Cotterets. He does not merely see and describe, he actually reconstructs and presents to the reader as vividly as it first appeared to him any scene or incident which attracted him. And what attracted Dumas was frequently that which, if all saw, few noted or appreciated. Wandering with keen curiosity about the village on the morning of a fête long before there was any chance of the happening of the first event of the day, he drinks in every sight and sound, and a quarter of a century afterwards is able to recount how “the fiddlers swept and trod smooth the appointed dancing-place, and how the plaster dolls intended to be broken by the cross-bow bolts were set in line on their stakes, and the rabbits waited dolefully, frightened, and with ears dropped on their necks, for the hour when a ring cunningly threaded on a stake would decide their fate, and send them from the dealer’s basket into the saucepan of the happy winner.” Passages of this nature abound in “Catherine Blum” — a fresh and pleasing story, the merit of which has been testified to by Mr. Swinburne — and give it a truth and value which are inestimable when the object of the writer is to convince.
As the owner of a fine garden when surveying its treasures remembers the grafting and transplanting that make them his own, so Alexandre Dumas, when in old age his mind ranged over the thousand volumes which bore his name, recalled that for one he was much indebted to a friend who had furnished its plot; that for another his son had suggested one of the chief characters; that a third had grown from a few words spoken by an actor in a play which he had witnessed and which had ignominiously failed. A stranger visiting Dumas’ garden might well be excused for failing to discriminate between the native and imported plants. All are so well grown or so cunningly grafted that they pass for Dumas’ own. Carefully examined, however, some would be found to exhale a foreign perfume. “Catherine Blum “has long passed as one of Dumas’ own flowers, yet the parent stem grew in Germany. Let as see how it came to be transplanted.
One morning at Brussels, in the little house occupied by him in the Boulevard Waterloo, Dumas heard himself asked for and went out. A young man of remarkable appearance was endeavouring to gain an audience. From him the author of “Monte Cristo “presently heard a most lamentable history. Suffice it to say that the stranger was, or averred that he was, the Comte Max de Goritz, a political exile of noble birth, and at the last stage of destitution. Being acquainted with several languages, the idea had occurred to him to offer his services to Dumas. “All the world,” said he, addressing our author in a final appeal, “knows that you have an excellent heart. If you refuse to employ me, or if you cannot do so, it only remains for me to blow out my brains. To-morrow morning all the Belgian papers will announce that there has been another suicide.”
“To-morrow, my dear sir,” replied Dumas, “all the Belgian papers will announce that you are my translator. Shake hands! From to-day I give you 350 francs a month.”
What did the exile do in return? For one thing he ransacked the plays of the German comedian Iffland, and translating his Die Jaeger, placed it before the Master. It so happened that Alexandre, gratified with the success of his pastoral novel “Conscience l’Innocent,” was meditating the composition of another story in the same genre.
It would have been easy enough to invent a plot, but here in the exile’s translation lay one pat to his hand. Dumas, at once the laziest and most industrious of men, laid hold of it, and commenced the composition of “Catherine Blum.” Yes, this tale, apparently so French, is in its framework the Jaeger of the German dramatist Iffland. In its framework only! for none of Dumas’ books are more characteristic of him.
As for the translator, around whom hung an impenetrable mystery, he continued to flourish more or less well on his 350 francs a month. When Dumas at the end of a year or two returned to Paris, the industrious assimilator of German plays travelled with him to assist at the birth of and to feed the journal Le Mousquetaire. Somewhat, it would appear, to the disgust of his fellow contributors, his name in all its splendour figured on the huge posters which decorated the walls of the city. One fine morning, as if by enchantment, the Count disappeared. The same day his benefactor was invited by the police to inspect a formidable dossier, to which these words served as a summary: —
“The man calling himself Comte Max de Goritz is a German Jew, whose real name is Mayer. He lives with a prostitute, who gives herself out as the daughter of a certain Sieur de Richmont, one of the impostors who pretended to be Louis XVII. Mayer is a criminal of the most dangerous class, his crimes ranging from petty larceny to housebreaking, and not stopping short of murder. He is wanted by the police of Vienna.”
Dumas was astounded. Then recovering himself, —
“Ma foi! gentlemen,” he said, “this man presented himself one day at my house in Brussels, in the character of a political exile. He seemed clever, energetic, and reliable, and I employed him without a suspicion that at bottom he was a scoundrel (bandit) or worse. Just before you came I was told that he had run away from Paris, and I fear you will have difficulty in catching him as long as he has a leg left.”
“Catherine Blum “was published in 1854 by Cadot (Paris). Some four years later, Dumas being hard pressed for a play, wanted at a few days’ notice, bethought himself of Die Jaeger and “Catherine Blum,” and put a version of them on the stage under the title Les Forestiers. The drama was played with very great success, and has been frequently revived.
One day, in 1850, Dumas found himself the guest of Lord and Lady Holland at Holland House. At night he was conducted to the poets’ room — so called from its having at different times been occupied by Samuel Rogers, Lord Byron, and other bards; — here, with his head on the pillow, he read Thomas Moore’s “Life of Byron.” Dawn filtered into the chamber, the birds awoke and sang; by and by it was broad daylight, but Alexandre, fascinated, still read on. When at length he rose, instead of leaving for Paris as he had intended to do, he journeyed to Newstead Abbey. Byron, of whose works he was a great admirer, now absorbed his thoughts, and a company of actors in Paris in need of his assistance at the rehearsals of a new play expected him in vain.
Moore’s quotation from the account of the wreck of the Juno affected Dumas as deeply as it had affected Byron. He greatly desired to read the whole narrative, and when, some two years later, he discovered it in Sir G. Dalzell’s “Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea “(1812),. he could not resist the pleasure of making it known in France by recasting and publishing it.
Finding that this shipwreck, now somewhat inaccessible in English, is very little known, and believing that its perusal will produce no less effect upon our readers than it produced upon the authors of “Don Juan “and of “Antony,” we have had it translated from the Frenchman’s excellent version, and now in our turn present it.
“The Scourge of Naples “with which the present volume concludes, is a brilliant bit of journalism produced, or rather fired off, by Dumas from his Neapolitan home at a time when prolonged residence there had made him familiar not only with its diminishing oysters of Lake Fusaro, but with its increasing army of mendicants. His residence at Naples would be considered by every beggar as a real piece of good fortune, while his remarkable appearance, accentuated by his careless attire (a suit of white canvas), would ensure his being sighted from afar by all — except such as were really blind beggars. Add to this his habit of careless giving, and it is plain that Dumas and the mendicants had very much to say to one another.
Dumas’ treatment of his painful subject is entirely characteristic. He dashes at it, and with a few strokes of his pen places before the reader a vivid impressionist sketch of Naples which makes him see, feel, and hear the colour, atmosphere, and sounds of that city. One h
R. S. G.
CATHERINE BLUM
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY.
YOU were telling me only yesterday, my boy: “Father, you don’t write enough books like ‘Conscience.’ “To which I replied: “Give your orders; you know quite well I do anything you want. Tell me the sort of book you wish, and you shall have it.”
Then you went on: “Well, I should like one of those tales of your boyhood, one of those little dramas of country life, whose scene is laid under the shadow of the giant trees of that noble Forest that made you a dreamer by its mystery and a poet by its charm of melancholy, one of those stories you sometimes tell at the fireside at home when you are fain of a respite from the long, romantic epics you weave for the world’s delight, — trifles you do not deem worthy of pen and ink. I love your native countryside, father, though I have never been there in the body, though I have only seen it from afar as through the mist of your reminiscences, as we behold a landscape through the vapours of a dream.”
Yes! I love the home of my fathers too, I love the village so dear to us all. I say village, for indeed it is no more, though it calls itself a market town. I love it so, I could bore you to extinction by mere dint of talking of it, — well not perhaps you, my own familiar friends, but other people to a certainty, — people less keenly interested in the subject. Villers-Cotterets is to me what Colmar is to my good friend Rusconi. For him Colmar is the centre of the world, the axis of the globe, the hub of the universe! It was at Colmar he met so many celebrities. Carrel! “Where did you first meet Carrel, Rusconi? “ — ” I conspired with him at Colmar, in 1821.” Talma! “When did you first meet Talma, Rusconi? “ — ” I saw him play at Colmar, in 1816.” Napoleon! “Where did you first meet Napoleon, Rusconi? “ — ” I saw him pass through Colmar, in 1808.” Well, everything dates for me from Villers-Cotterets just as everything dates for Rusconi from Colmar.
One advantage (or disadvantage) Rusconi has over me, — he was not born at Colmar; he was born at Mantua, the ducal town, the birthplace of Virgil and Sordello, whereas I was born at Villers-Cotterets.
So you see, my dear lad, I don’t need much pressing to talk about my beloved little town, whose white houses grouped together in the hollow of the horse-shoe formed by its huge forest look like birds in A nest, over which the old Church with its long-necked steeple keeps watch and ward like a mother. You have but to take from my lips the seal that imprisons and confines my thoughts and words, for thoughts and words to escape alive and sparkling like the foam from the flagon of beer that makes us start and cry and jump at our exiles’ table here, like the froth of champagne that wins a smile from us and brings us closer together as we recall the sunshine of our far-off home.
After all, isn’t it there that I really lived, since it is there that I waited for life to begin? We live by hope more than by reality. What is it colours our horizon with gold and azure? Alas, my boy, you will know one day; it is Hope.
There I was born; there I uttered my first cry of pain; there under my mother’s eye my first smile opened out like a flower on my face; there I ran, a yellow-haired boy with rosy cheeks, after those youthful illusions that so easily escape us, and if caught, leave behind on our fingers nothing but a pinch of velvety dust — butterflies their name. Alas! what I am going to say is both true and strange. It is only when we are young that we see beautiful butterflies; later come the wasps which sting; then the bats which foretell death.
The three periods of life can be summed up thus: youth, manhood, old age, — butterflies, wasps, bats!
There my father died. I was at the age when one does not know what death is — when one hardly knows what a father means.
Thither I brought my dead mother; there, in that charming graveyard, more like a children’s flower-decked playing-ground than a burial place, she sleeps side by side with the war-worn hero of the Pyramids, the General who fought so well in Egypt. A tombstone that the hand of a woman who loved them both laid there covers them.
To right and left lie the grandparents, the father and the mother of my mother; aunts too whose names I remember, but whose faces I only see athwart the grey veil of many years.
It is there I shall go and sleep in my turn — but as late as possible, please God, for I shall be very loth to leave you, my darling lad.
On that day I shall find beside the mother who suckled me, the loving nurse who rocked me in my cradle, — dear good mother Zine, whom I speak of in my “Memoirs,” and near whose bed the spirit of my father came and bade me adieu.
How should I not love to speak of that immense cradle of greenery so full of fond memories? I knew everything there, not only the townsfolk, not only the stones and the houses, but the very trees of the forest. As one by one those reminiscences of my youth disappeared, I have wept for them. 0! good white heads of the little town, dear Abbé Grégoire, good Captain Fontaine, worthy old Niguet, dear cousin Deviolaine, I have sometimes tried to make you live again; but you only startled me, poor ghosts, I found you so pale and dumb in spite of my gentle and kindly summons. I have wept for you, ye sombre stones of the cloister of St. Rémy, ye colossal gates, ye gigantic staircases, ye narrow cells, ye cyclopean kitchens, that I have seen falling layer by layer, until the pick and shovel laid bare amid the ruins your foundations, broad as the base of a city wall, your cellars, gaping wide as abysmal chasms! I have wept for you more especially, ye fine trees of the park, ye giants of the forest, ye families of rugged oaks, beeches with smooth silvery bark, trembling poplars and chestnuts with your pyramids of blossoms, round which there hummed in May and June swarms of bees, their brown bodies swollen with honey, and their feet all clogged with wax. You all fell suddenly in a few months, you who had so many years still to live, so many generations to shelter under your shade, so many loves to behold passing mysteriously and noiselessly over the mossy carpet which the ages had stretched at your feet! You had known François I. and Madame d’Etampes, Henri II. and Diane de Poitiers, Henri IV. and Gabrielle d’Estrelles; you spoke of those illustrious dead by the letters graven on your bark; you had hoped that those thrice enlaced crescents, those initials amorously twined with one another, those crowns of laurels and roses, would protect you from a commonplace death and from that mercantile God’s acre called a timber-yard. Alas, you were mistaken, beautiful trees! One day you heard the resounding ring of the axe and the dull hiss of the saw... destruction was come upon you... death cried aloud to you: “Your hour has come, your pride is laid in the dust!”
And I have seen you lying on the ground, stripped from roots to topmost twig, your branches scattered round you; and it seemed to me that I had grown five thousand years younger and was walking over that immense battle-field which spreads between Pelion and Ossa, and that I was beholding stretched at my feet those three-headed hundred-armed Titans who strove to scale Olympus and whom Jupiter consumed with his lightning.
If ever you take a walk with me, leaning on my arm, dear child, in the midst of those mighty woods, if you cross through those scattered villages, if you sit down on those moss-covered stones, if you bow your head over those tombs, all will seem to you at first silent and dumb; but I will teach you the language of all those old friends of my youth, and then you will understand how sweet a murmur they make in my ear alive or dead.
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