My Memoirs. Marguerite Steinheil

me, dear friend," he said.

      "I like all good poets," I replied, "and this one opens wide horizons to me. He seems very far...."

      "You are right. I merely try to see what is near me," said Coppée with a smile.

      Little Marthe was very proud of the poet, but this did not prevent her from making use of him. She made him gather shells for her, one summer, on a small beach in Normandy, and told him to store them in his large felt hat. It was there that he once took us to a huge rock in a secret hole of which he showed me a large box of cigarettes.

      "The doctor strictly forbids me to smoke," he explained, "and my sister (Coppée was a bachelor and lived with his sister, who was the most devoted person one could well conceive) sees to it that the doctor's instructions are carried out. Therefore, I come here secretly to smoke. Life without tobacco, you know...." Then taking me to the other side of the rock, he pointed to the sand which was strewn with hundreds of cigarette ends, and cheerfully exclaimed: "What a cemetery!"

      Marthe, who was then seven years old, had often heard that Coppée was a great man, and that all which came from a great man was worth keeping. While we walked on, Coppée and I, she gathered all the cigarette ends, hid them, and the next day, put them in a box which she would not let out of her hands. Coppée, later on questioned her about the precious contents of the box.... He believed, as I did, that it contained sea-shells, and he was very much tickled when she opened the box, and in her little fluty voice, declared: "I too want to have a keepsake from you, and I have it!"

      In Paris I often saw Coppée as I passed by the Café des Vosges, his favourite haunt, a few hundred yards away from the Impasse Ronsin. He saluted me, quickly paid the waiter, overtook me, and together we walked to my house, talking of books.

      He himself organised a performance at my villa of his Passant, the charming one-act play which had made him famous when he was twenty-seven, and still a clerk in the Ministry of War.

      During the Dreyfus affair, in which he took a leading part as one of the founders of the Patrie Française League, I saw him less and less. Meeting him one morning in the gardens of the Luxembourg, I asked him why he neglected me.

      "Ah! my friend," he said hesitatingly, "I'd love to call on you as in the past, but the trouble is there are too many Dreyfusards in your salon!"

      By an amusing coincidence, Zola called that very day, but he only remained a little while.

      "To my great regret, I must go, Madame." And he added in a low, confidential voice: "The fact is there are too many Anti-Dreyfusards here."

      The author of the Roujon-Macquarts was manly and brave besides being an able if unsympathetic novelist, but he had, to my knowledge, one little failing: he disliked talent in others, and one weakness: he was a gourmet. Therefore on the two or three occasions when he dined with us, I arranged a menu which Brillat Savarin would have endorsed and took care not to invite any other writer.

      Zola lacked in conversation what he lacked in his writing: delicacy, refinement, lightness. He was heavy, ponderous and rather aggressive.

      I teased him one day: "How is the chase after human documents going on?" I asked.

      "Quite well, Madame. I hunt my quarry everywhere, and all day long. Human documents, slices of life, searching character-studies, that is all there is in literature."

      "But what of the writer's personality? Is that of no account whatever?"

      "It shouldn't be. I try to eliminate my personality from my books...."

      "And don't you succeed?" I asked.

      "I have the misfortune of being possessed of a temperament which I cannot altogether get rid of, alas!" came the pompous reply.

      Another time, after re-reading "La Terre," I told him "You are a pessimist, M. Zola! You see only one side of life, the ugly and animal side; and but one kind of people... the bad kind. And to cap it all, you exaggerate. You believe yourself a 'realist,' but as a matter of fact, you are an idealist... with an ugly ideal!"

      It was very evident that Zola was not pleased. Without relenting, however, I went on: "I have lived in the country for many, many years. I assure you that our peasants round Beaucourt and Belfort bear very little likeness to the brutes you describe. I have loved the peasants...."

      "And I, Madame," Zola retorted severely, "I have observed them."

      That night, after my guest's departure, I did not go on with "La Terre," but refreshed my mind by reading, for the twentieth time, "Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard" and felt extremely thankful to Anatole France.

      I remember an Argentine mine-owner whose ambition was to meet celebrities. He saw Zola and said to me: "What! Is this the man who wrote 'L'Assommoir,' 'Nana,' 'Germinal' ... this little insignificant person! I had fancied him looking somewhat like Beethoven, clean-shaven, with a powerful face, a tremendous brow, glowing eyes and a mane...."

      Zola overheard the remark and smiled. He rightly appreciated that kind of indirect compliment.

      I happened to meet Zola on a day following one of his defeats at the election of the French Academy. A young man, pallid and very nervous but full of good intentions, said to the great writer as if to console him: "Maître, what does it matter?... After all, not even Pascal or Molière or Balzac was made a member of the Academy."

      Zola did not reply, but a little later, when cups of tea and "petits-fours" were being handed round, he began to describe the Morgue in an even more realistic and harrowing manner than in "Thérèse Raquin"!... And as he spoke, his eyes were riveted on the tactless young man, who turned livid and trembled.

      Had Zola taken into account the importance of political influence in the Academical elections—as in everything else in France—he would probably have become an "Immortal." At any rate, few writers were even more worthy of a seat under the Coupole.

      I spent pleasant hours at the Institute. I was present at the receptions of Anatole France who obtained the seat of M. de Lesseps and of Edmond Rostand, by M. de Voguë, and at a few more of these ceremonies which play such an important part in the literary and social life of Paris. I have always felt a deep sympathy with the récipiendaires, whatever their degree of literary merit. For even though a man may have written books which the world will hasten to forget, that is no reason why he should be compelled to listen in public, and for an hour, to a colleague's eulogies. What an ordeal and excessive cruelty when the récipiendaire happens really to deserve the panegyric!... It is positively painful to the least sensitive onlooker. The ladies, however, suffer the least, for their attention is naturally divided between the speeches and the display of new frocks and hats... an Academical Reception having long been a recognised occasion for the exhibition of the "latest creations."

      Pierre Loti once described to me the mixed feelings of a récipiendaire in a way that would have made any nervous writer almost tremble at the thought that the Academy might some day elect him against his will.

      Our conversation took place at the wedding of one of my cousins, the bridegroom being a relation of Loti's. The melancholy author of so many evocations, of so many exotic idyls, spoke well, but in a hollow, monotonous voice.

      A concert was given after the wedding and a Breton sang several of his pieces: sailor-songs, excessively strong and free.

      Loti, the naval officer, and Loti, the author of "Pêcheurs d'Islande," was carried away, and turning to me, he said: "Isn't my friend wonderful! As you listen to him, you can see the swelling ocean, you can feel the sea-breeze in your face...."

      "Yes, and you can even taste the brine, smell the musty fish and... feel sea-sick!" I added, for some of the details in the song really gave one qualms.

      Loti was not pleased, and to make amends I spoke about those books of his which I preferred, the "Roman d'un Spahi," "Mon Frère Yves," and "Propos d'Exil." And, as we talked, we travelled together to the Far East, and landed on an island in the South Seas, whereupon, using that gift that perhaps he alone among living men possesses,