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The stove-fitter returned to make his bow to his benefactress, and she desired him to fetch a coach. When he came back, she begged him to give little Atala Judici a home, and to take her away at once.
"Good-bye, mamma," said Vautrin; "I am going to a theatre on the boulevard to see M. Marty in Le Mont Sauvage, a fine play taken from Le Solitaire.... If you like, I will take you and these two ladies " "Thank you; I must decline," said Mme. Couture. "What! my good lady!" cried Mme. Vauquer, "decline to see a play founded on the Le Solitaire, a work by Atala de Chateaubriand?
If we take from René the cliffs of Brittany, or the wild savannahs from Atala, the mists of Swabia from Werther, or the sunny waves and scorched-up hills from Paul and Virginia, we can neither understand Chateaubriand, Bernardin de St. Pierre, or Goethe. Places and events are closely linked, for Nature is the same in the eye as in the heart of man.
But it is on "Atala" that Chateaubriand's title to be one of the greatest masters of French prose literature depends. I. The Song of Death "It is surely a singular fate," said the old, blind Red Indian chief to the young Frenchman, "which has brought us together from the ends of the earth. I see in you a civilised man, who, for some strange reason, wishes to become a savage.
"She is an angel." "It is because my good old boy is afraid of being caught by Samanon. He is hiding, and I wish he could be free " "Why?" "On! then he would take me to Bobino, perhaps to the Ambigu." "What a delightful creature!" said the Baroness, kissing the girl. "Are you rich?" asked Atala, who was fingering the Baroness' lace ruffles. "Yes, and No," replied Madame Hulot.
We heard nothing but the crackling tread of some nocturnal beast of prey, or the cry of some animal in the agony of death. On coming to an opening in the forest I made a shelter for the night. Atala then threw herself at my feet, and clasped my knees, and again begged me to leave her. But I swore that, if she returned to the camp, I would follow her, and give myself up.
Though a young man as yet, Loti saw his work crowned with what in France may be considered the supreme sanction: he was elected to membership in the French Academy. His name became coupled with those of Bernardin de St. Pierre and of Chateaubriand. With the sole exception of the author of Paul and Virginia and of the writer of Atala, he seemed to be one without predecessor and without a master.
It was one of his last wishes to be buried where the sea, for ever playing and plashing around him, would chant him an everlasting requiem. Many will sympathise with the feeling. No scene could be more in accordance with the solemnity of death, the long waiting for the "eternal term;" more in unison with the pure spirit that could write such a prose-poem as Atala.
"Look at madame," said the Baroness, pointing to the stove-fitter's wife, "she has been quite happy because she was received into the bosom of the Church. You married like the beasts that perish." "I?" said Atala. "Why, if you will give me as much as Daddy Vyder gives me, I shall be quite happy unmarried again. It is a grind. Do you know what it is to ?"
Paris, she knew, wonderful, haunting Paris: the Paris of Clovis, and St. Louis; of Louis the Great, and Napoleon III; of Balzac, and her own Dumas. She tasted the mud and comfort of thick old London, and the while wept with Jeremiah and sang with Deborah, Semiramis, and Atala. Mary of Scotland and Joan of Arc held her dark hands in theirs, and Kings lifted up their sceptres.
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