The Parisians, Book IV

The Parisians, Book IV by Edward Bulwer-lytton

Isaura Cicogna writes to Madame de Grantmesnil recounting Parisian literary society: M. Savarin's playful theory that an author's parting from a finished work is sacred, his frank admission that he treats his reputation as a defended kingdom, and his description of his protégé Gustave Rameau as the leading voice of "New Paris," a sickly but clever successor to Savarin's own "Young France." Isaura describes her growing but pitying friendship with Rameau, whose envy of the rich and famous makes him miserable despite his gifts, and confesses her own unsettled ambitions between singing and writing, wondering whether genius is mere superiority of style and form or something deeper that only half-expresses what ordinary hearts already feel. A second letter introduces Graham Vane, an English gentleman of aristocratic family whose open, sincere manner fascinates Isaura far more than Rameau's brilliance. She recounts a garden meeting at her suburban villa: Graham hears her singing a paraphrased Neapolitan song about a fisherman deceived by a reflected face in water, mistaking it for a Nereid when it is really a mortal girl on the rock behind him. He argues the original's moral—that we eventually see past illusion to reality—is truer than Isaura's revision, in which the fisherman never discovers the truth; he then warns her, as a friend, not to mistake the "artist" for the worthy human being beneath, cautioning her obliquely against Rameau. Isaura weeps, calls herself an orphan starved for such honest counsel, and reveals she has already begun losing her taste for the stage career for which she was trained. Their exchange is interrupted by arriving guests, including the Savarins and Rameau. Isaura writes again, torn between her attraction to Graham and her belief that true love requires deep sympathy between kindred natures—she doubts whether an "idealist" artist and a "realist" man of affairs can truly unite—and announces she has resolved to give up singing professionally. Madame de Grantmesnil replies at length: on authorship and fame's uncertain immortality (citing Phrynichus, Agathon, Alcaeus as writers remembered only by name), on the mysterious, unteachable gift that lets a great writer voice what readers already feel, and on love and marriage. She advises against marrying a fellow artist—citing Racine's happy but intellectually mismatched marriage and her own unhappy love for an artist equal to herself—dismisses Rameau as a man whose infirmities of genius mimic its strength, and cautiously endorses Graham, provided Isaura truly loves rather than merely admires him. A postscript needles Isaura about why the Englishman should have anything to do with her renouncing the stage. The narrative then follows Graham directly. Restrained by an unspecified prior obligation that makes him doubt he is "free" to court Isaura, he nonetheless joins a house party at Lac d'Enghien hosted by the American Mrs. Morley and her husband Colonel Morley, along with the Savarins, Signora Venosta, and Isaura. Days of shared excursions, moonlit sailing, and literary sparring between Graham and Savarin deepen the mutual, unspoken attachment between Graham and Isaura, culminating in their both silently having chosen the same unnamed favorite star in the sky, and Graham murmuring a wish that they might view it together a year hence. Mrs. Morley schemes to unite the pair, while Madame Savarin, favoring Rameau as a match for Isaura for both sentimental and financial reasons, quietly works to prevent any private understanding between Graham and Isaura from forming. The party breaks up: Savarin receives troubling news of financial distress from his publisher and a pressing creditor, resolved offstage through his wife's practical support and his own pride, which forbids soliciting help from friends he has previously aided. Graham receives a letter from the police agent M. Renard reporting a breakthrough in a private investigation: the man Graham seeks, Victor de Mauleon—an aristocrat of scandalous past (implicated years earlier in an affair involving a duchess's jewels and forced entry into a wife's rooms) and uncle to a Louise Duval whom Graham has been commissioned to trace—has resurfaced in Paris under the alias Jean Lebeau, working as a public letter-writer and haunting the cafe Jean Jacques, where he is entangled with radical, anti-property, anti-religious "International" circles and rich secret sympathizers. Graham disguises himself as a vulgar English clerk named Mr. Lamb to infiltrate this world without revealing his identity, fearing both personal danger and the awkward fact that Lebeau/Mauleon once dueled a man Graham believes was his own father. Through billiards and dominos at the cafe, Graham cultivates Lebeau and his associate M. Georges, rents a room from Georges, and gradually raises the matter of locating Louise Duval, ostensibly on behalf of an anonymous legal client concerning a possible inheritance. Lebeau, guarded and evidently moved, admits he once knew her and asks for time to consider, while parrying Graham's questions about his own identity and political sympathies, including his familiarity with the fervent workman-agitator Armand Monnier. The section closes with Lebeau alone at night, revealed as a secret organizer funding radical activity through accumulated and multiplied funds, writing a coded letter to an unnamed "noble friend" describing his intent to launch a newspaper to shape public opinion for a coming upheaval, and announcing that the time has finally come for Victor de Mauleon to reclaim his true name and rank in society, having refused all charity and built his own means through patient, secret enterprise. The text ends here, mid-plot, before any of these threads—Isaura's choice, Savarin's finances, Graham's investigation, or Mauleon's planned reappearance—is resolved.

By Edward Bulwer-lytton · First published 1837 · Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance, Social Commentary · 9 chapters · 23,550 words

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FROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL.

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Historical Fiction · Romance · Drama · 19th Century Literature · French History · Parisian Society · Upper Class · Aristocracy · Social Hierarchy · Love Triangle · Marriage · Family Drama

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