Raoul’s real and studiously suppressed character accords with that which he shows to the public. He is carried away by his own acting, declaims with great eloquence, and could not be more self-centered were he, like Louis XIV, the State in person. None knows better how to play at sentiment or to deck himself out in a shoddy greatness. The grace of moral beauty and the language of self-respect are at his command, he is a very Alceste in pose, while acting like Philinte. His selfishness ambles along under cover of this painted cardboard, and not seldom attains the end he has in view. Excessively idle, he never works except under the prick of necessity. Continuous labor applied to the construction of a lasting fabric is beyond his conception; but in a paroxysm of rage, the result of wounded vanity, or in some crisis precipitated by his creditors, he will leap the Eurotas and perform miracles of mental forestalment; after which, worn out and amazed at his own fertility, he falls back into the enervating dissipations of Paris life. Does necessity once more threaten, he has no strength to meet it; he sinks a step and traffics with his honor. Impelled by a false idea of his talents and his future, founded on the rapid rise of one of his old comrades (one of the few cases of administrative ability brought to light by the Revolution of July), he tries to regain his footing by taking liberties with his friends, which are nothing short of a moral outrage, though they remain buried among the skeletons of private life, without a word of comment or blame.
His heart, devoid of nicety, his shameless hand, hail-fellow-well-met with every vice, every degradation, every treachery, every party, have placed him as much beyond reach of attack as a constitutional king. The peccadillo, which would raise hue and cry after a man of high character, counts for nothing in him; while conduct bordering on grossness is barely noticed. In making his excuses people find their own.
The very man who would fain despise him shakes him by the hand, fearing to need his help. So numerous are his friends that he would prefer enemies. This surface good-nature which captivates a new acquaintance and is no bar to treachery, which knows no scruple and is never at fault for an excuse, which makes an outcry at the wound which it condones, is one of the most distinctive features of the journalist. This camaraderie (the word is a stroke of genius) corrodes the noblest minds; it eats into their pride like rust, kills the germ of great deeds, and lends a sanction to moral cowardice. There are men who, by exacting this general slackness of conscience, get themselves absolved for playing the traitor and the turncoat. Thus it is that the most enlightened portion of the nation becomes the least worthy of respect.
From the literary point of view, Nathan is deficient in style and information. Like most young aspirants in literature, he gives out today what he learned yesterday. He has neither the time nor the patience to make an author. He does not use his own eyes, but can pick up from others, and, while he fails in producing a vigorously constructed plot, he sometimes covers this defect by the fervor he throws into it. He “went in” for passion, to use a slang word, because there is no limit to the variety of modes in which passion may express itself, while the task of genius is to sift out from these various expressions the element in each which will appeal to everyone as natural. His heroes do not stir the imagination; they are magnified individuals, exciting only a passing sympathy; they have no connection with the wider interests of life, and therefore stand for nothing but themselves. Yet the author saves himself by means of a ready wit and of those lucky hits which billiard players call “flukes.” He is the best man for a flying shot at the ideas which swoop down upon Paris, or which Paris starts. His teeming brain is not his own, it belongs to the period. He lives upon the event of the day, and, in order to get all he can from it, exaggerates its bearing. In short, we miss the accent of truth, his words ring false; there is something of the juggler in him, as Count Félix said. One feels that his pen has dipped in the ink of an actress’ dressing-room.
In Nathan we find an image of the literary youth of the day, with their sham greatness and real poverty; he represents their irregular charm and their terrible falls, their life of seething cataracts, sudden reverses, and unlooked-for triumphs. He is a true child of this jealousy-ridden age, in which a thousand personal rivalries, cloaking themselves under the name of schools, make profit out of their failures by feeding fat with them a hydra-headed anarchy; an age which expects fortune without work, glory without talent, and success without effort, but which, after many a revolt and skirmish, is at last brought by its vices to swell the civil list, in submission to the powers that be. When so many young ambitions start on foot to meet at the same goal, there must be competing wills, frightful destitution, and a relentless struggle. In this merciless combat it is the fiercest or the adroitest selfishness which wins. The lesson is not lost on an admiring world; spite of bawling, as Molière would say, it acquits and follows suit.
When, in his capacity of
