THE obligation laid upon every writer to conform to the tone and style of the age in which he lives explains why the present author was virtually forced to make the serious tales of this collection extraordinarily sombre, and constrained to strike perhaps an over-free note in those scattered among them which he intended to lighten the general mood and uncrease the reader’s brow. Everything degenerates with age. During the reign of Louis XIV the sensitive, subtle novels of Madame de La Fayette entertained a public still steeped in chivalry and courtly love which, having digested its Round Table romances, uncomplainingly took to the adventures of a heroine who kept her lover dangling for nine volumes before agreeing to a white wedding in the tenth. In those days, when books were few, readers had plenty of time to grow pale-cheeked as they perused this insipid stuff. Indeed, it is not too long since people modelled their wooing habits on the pattern laid down in these novels.
The Epicureanism of the likes of Ninon de Lenclos, Marion de Lorme, the Marquis de Sévigné and the La Fares, the Chaulieus, the Saint-Evremonds, in short, of the whole of that delightful company of souls who had been cured of the modish languors imposed by the god of Cythera and now began to think that, as Fontenelle later put it, ‘the only good thing about love is the physical side of it’, their Epicureanism, I say, somewhat altered the tone of fiction. Marivaux and Crébillon fils who came after them felt that the old style of languishing would not appeal to a century corrupted by the Regent, and accordingly wrapped immorality and cynicism in a style which was light, flowery, and often even philosophical. Perhaps they should have left it at that. But wit to a writer is what the stomach is to a gourmet. At first both are satisfied by simple dishes which, however, must steadily be improved by adding all the spices of Asia. Eventually Prévost appeared and, if we may make so bold, invented the true form of the novel. He alone had the art of maintaining interest in a multitude of invariably racy adventures which never allowed the reader’s mind a moment’s respite, but forced him to be caught up by that necessary state of tension which is the most solid way of ensuring that his interest stays gripped.
Prévost was the man who opened up the French language to the masterpieces of the English novel. Schooled by Fielding and Richardson, we learned from them that it is not always with virtue that we catch the reader’s interest; that virtue is a fine thing to be sure, and that everything must be done to ensure that it triumphs; but we also saw that its victory is not a law of nature, merely a law by which we would like all men to abide, that it is in no way indispensable to fiction, that it is not even the rule which allows the reader’s attention to be gripped, for when virtue triumphs, things being as they of necessity are, my tears dry up by themselves. But if, on the contrary, virtue, after being most sorely tested, finally succumbs to the repeated assaults of vice, then our hearts will not fail to be torn and, having brought us to the ultimate pitch of involvement, the author cannot fail to succeed. Yet if Richardson, after fifteen volumes, had brought matters to a chaste conclusion by converting Lovelace and allowing him to marry Clarissa quietly, then it might well be asked if readers, confronted by a novel which went in this quite different direction, would have shed the precious tears which we could not prevent the author extracting from us. It is therefore nature that must be captured by all who strive in this genre, and not morality, for however fine a thing morality may be, it invariably remains the handiwork of men, whereas the novel must always be a picture of nature.
Be that as it may, it is clear that in the wake of the novelists who wrote at the start or around the middle of this century, any author who wished to please his public had either to write as they had or else seek those stronger colours in nature which had eluded them. Crébillon’s ‘sweet love-talk’ was not worth pursuing, but both the broad brushstrokes of the author of Marianne and Prévost’s varied nuancing of light and shade were.
As to La Nouvelle Héloïse, it were best set to one side. It is a kind of unique masterpiece which cannot be repeated. All the imitations it has spawned are dreadful. Unfortunately people nowadays are not sufficiently convinced of this point, which explains why we are drowning in a stream of inanities allegedly drawn from Rousseau’s novel. It is now impossible to read a single page of any of it because the authors of all these platitudinous reproductions, who have as little taste as brains, stupidly concluded that all it takes to be as perfect as the original is to add languor to two or three mildly risqué episodes. They had not the wit see that more than this is needed to produce a second Héloïse, nor did they have any sense that it is vital to own a blazing spirit like Rousseau’s and a mind as philosophical as his—two things which nature does not bring together in one person twice in any century.
It must be conceded that in these tales which we here set before the reader, the impetuous tack we have given ourselves a licence to follow does not always accord with the moral values, as chaste as they are tedious, expressed in the anaemic stories of Monsieur d’Arnaud. But if we have not always been very virtuous, we have always been true. Now, nature is much more often bent than straight, and its twists and turns had to be followed. This we did. And who can boast, in writings of this sort, that he has shown virtue truly victorious unless the stratagems of vice which press it hard on all sides have not been strongly emphasized? Would Madame de Thélème in the story which bears her name* be so sympathetic if the merchant who deceives her were not an odious man? Would Monrevel provoke tears which are so delicious to shed had not the Countess de Sancerre been such a villainous woman? And finally, what would Lorenza be other than merely a woman harassed by a rival of Antonio,* if that rival were not at one and the same time her father-in-law and a depraved monster? etc.
Let us be plain. With time tastes grow blasé, minds decay, and the public tires of stories, romances, and comedies. An author has no alternative but to serve up his wares highly seasoned if he wishes to succeed. In several of these tales we have used a ploy which is quite new. Unfortunately the bigots will protest, however dramatic the effect which we feel justified in expecting it to produce. The basis of all stories, all novels, is the young woman loved by a young man of her own sort, who is crossed in her affections by a rival she dislikes. If this rival wins, then the heroine is, as people say, very unhappy. But in the present age (for the present must always be our starting point), and given the depravity of modern manners, must the denouement of novels which we have always known really go on driving young women to despair? In view of the generally acknowledged ease with which she can console herself for having married an unpleasant husband, need we feel particularly sorry for any girl who has been thrust into the arms of a man like that?… It was this consideration which led us to add a further dimension to the usual age and ugliness in our portrayal of the rival who disrupts the amours of the heroine. We gave him a touch of vice or lechery calculated to instil real fear into the girls he sets out to seduce, with the result that by this means these young women, finding themselves facing a fate infinitely more terrible than anything they have been made to fear hitherto, cannot help proving to be infinitely more interesting. An ugly old man who becomes the lord and master of a young woman may well make her the deserving object of our sympathies, as you will agree. Yet does her predicament amount to a full-blown calamity, when we reflect that a new wardrobe and a young lover can so easily make her forget her small, temporary trials? But if, on the contrary, either this rival lover or the husband she has already married should prove capable of unimaginable depravity, odious conduct, bizarre tastes, cruel and ignoble whims, and threatens to subject his young, defenceless victim to an unending sequence of mental and physical tortures, will we not quake as we watch while he succeeds? Cold-blooded readers will be scandalized by such wicked ways, though they are much too underused nowadays. But there is an altogether different thrill in store for readers who are warmer-blooded and more spirited and will lap up anything as long as it is interesting. Aware of how wayward nature can be, they will readily pursue her down the most tortuous paths with a view to studying people, understanding them, and shedding tears for the terrible things that invariably befall them if they fail to apply the principles of virtue to correct the influence of their capricious temperaments on their weak and pusillanimous souls.*
No doubt it was wise that monstrous examples of intemperance were kept well hidden in more virtuous, more honest times, when even the word ‘love’ was scarcely ever mentioned. But with the growing perversity of modern manners it has been possible to lift one corner of the veil, and say to mankind: this is what you have turned into, you must change your ways, for you are repulsive, an abomination.
Were people in the ancient world, or even since the age of chivalry, aware that the kind of depravity we have shown actually existed? Did authors deliberately exclude it from their portrayal of human nature? Yet did not Boccaccio, Bandini, the Duchess d’Alençon,* and our troubadours make extensive use of it, and was it not the reason why they proved so popular? To be interesting, a writer can nowadays call upon passions other than jealousy, vengeance, and ambition; he can pluck other chords in his reader’s heart, and make them vibrate effectively. This new style of proceeding calls for discretion, and the most modest of women may read us without a shadow ever passing across her brow.
Yet we admit that there is a modicum of ribaldry in our facetious tales.* But as a man of sober judgement has observed: ‘It is perfectly legitimate for an author to be merry in a tale, and even to take certain liberties which would be quite out of place in a serious work.’
It is a form of writing in which great men have not been ashamed to dabble. Sisenna, Roman praetor and scion of the illustrious Cornelian family, translated the licentious Milesian fables, and Petronius the consul amused us with the debauches of Nero.* Where is the censor so strict who could not smile at the frankness, the naivety of the scholar of Pergamum whom Saint Louis, however, would have gladly burned?* As we know, Boccaccio was accused of atheism because he wrote those delightful stories of his… but we no longer live under the thumb of the clerics, and the word ‘atheist’ has ceased to be a term of abuse. One other fault was found in him. ‘Chi potesse contare’ (said Boniface Vannozzi) ‘quantè putanè ha fatto il decamerone rimmarebbe stupido et senza senzo’*—another criticism we do not fear. ‘Adhesso,’ we might say, ‘le putane sono fatte no che piu periculoso.’* Respectable ladies will therefore shed tears as they read our tragic tales. They will grace with a smile those which seem a trifle bawdy and, sure in the knowledge that all is meant to amuse, will not take fright or be corrupted. Ma per le puttane,* they will not venture any further down the ignoble path on which they have chosen to set their feet. In these facetious tales we shall not, therefore, have inflicted any harm on virtue, and we will most certainly not have given any encouragement to vice. That leaves the clerics, but no one listens to them any more… and the bigots, but they have their reputations to think of, and will not dare speak out. There remain the trifling, ephemeral authors or those half-baked assemblers of thirty volumes a year, who are either absurd compilers or ridiculous plagiarists who bring literature into disrepute. They grow apoplectic when they see that these tales of ours are written with scrupulous regard for a language which they themselves mangle every day, and that they grip the reader’s attention by means other than their own tediously repetitious ploys. As a consequence, they may well stir up whatever trouble they can for us. But we despise them utterly. We stand too high above them even to see that they exist, we shall not even hear their snarls, nor shall we stoop to answer them. To speak of them or pay them the slightest attention would be to raise them from the mud to which their petty scribblings damn them to remain in perpetuity.
It only remains to point out that these tales are all new. None is modelled upon an existing source. Only one, ‘The Enchanted Tower’, has some historical basis, and a small element of another, ‘The Marquise de Thélème’, is a reminiscence of Madame du Noyer.* It will be seen from the frankness of this admission how far we are from trying the reader’s patience by foisting borrowings or thefts on him. Whoever writes in this genre must either be original or steer clear of it altogether. We shall now set out the elements of the two tales we have mentioned which can be found in the sources we identify.
The Arab historian Abul-Coecim-Terif-Aben-Tariq, an author hardly known to our fashionable wits, said the following of ‘The Enchanted Tower’. Rodrigo, a decadent king, was in the habit of summoning the daughters of his vassals to his court. Among their number was Florinde, daughter of Count Julian, whom he ravished. Her father, who was in Africa, received the news by an allegorical letter written by his daughter. He raised the Moors and returned to Spain at their head. Rodrigo knew not which way to turn. His coffers were empty and there was no place to hide. He decided to search the Enchanted Tower near Toledo, where he was told he would find vast amounts of gold. There he discovered a statue of Time holding a club poised to strike which, by means of words carved in stone, warned Rodrigo of the misfortunes which awaited him. The prince continued on his way and found an immense tank full of water, but no money. He retraced his steps and ordered the tower to be shut up close and locked. A thunderbolt carried it off, leaving mere vestiges. Despite these dire portents, the king assembled an army, fought a battle near Cordova which lasted one week, and was killed. No trace of his body was ever found. That is what history supplied. Let the reader now peruse our story and he may judge for himself whether or not what we have added justifies our contention that the story should be regarded as entirely ours.
As to ‘The Marquise de Thélème’, the reader who turns to volume 2, page 202, of the Letters of Madame du Noyer will find the story of a woman from Champagne who travels to Paris to take part in a court case. Soon it becomes clear that she will lose. A rich tax-gatherer who is infatuated with her offers to ensure that she wins, his price being her favours. She agrees and wins her case. When she returns home to her husband, guilt makes her ill. Her husband insists on knowing the cause of her melancholy. She admits everything. She is pardoned and told that what she did was well done. The woman is restored to health and subsequently lives as happily as can be with the husband she had offended. There you have the bald situation, the crude, comic outline on which we built one of our most tragic and absorbing tales. If our work is compared with the source we have indicated, it will be seen that we may rightly claim the honour of being the true originators of the story.
We had no guide for any of the other twenty-eight tales.* If the stories they tell do not please, the fault is ours alone, since no help from outside was sought to bolster our feeble talents. We would be considerably more confident of winning the approval of the modern public if we had imitated Richardson or Rousseau. But alas, our tales are our own, and consequently the reader who is closed in his mind need go no further. He will discover here nothing that is already well known and a boldness of outlook which may well not be suited to his tastes.