And what will come after the chienne? Hugo's pieuvre8 failed completely, perhaps because it is too much like a pleutre. Can we not stop nt the chienne? However, let us leave prophesying. The designs of Providence are inscrutable.
What interests me is something else.
Which of the two prophecies of Cassandra has been fulfilled for Leontine? Is her once graceful little head resting on a lacetrimmed pillow in her own hotel, or has it declined on to a rough hospital-bolster to fall asleep for ever, or wake to poverty and woe? But perhaps neither the one nor the other has happened, and she is busy getting her daughter married or hoarding money to buy a substitute to go into the army in place of her son. She is no longer young now-and probably she is well over thirty.
s In 1 866, after the appearance of Lrs travaillrurs dr Ia mer, by Victor Hugo, in which there is a brilliant and frightening description of an octopus. certain journalists began to compare bl'autiful women of light behaviour with the octopus: pictures appeared which depicted the octopus in the form of a charmer; frocks and hats a Ia piruvrl' bPcame fashionable and the word pieuvrr soon acquired a new meaning-a woman of light behaviour who sucked out the substance of her admirer. (A.S. ) Cf. also A. C. Hilton's "Octopus," a parody of Swinburne's "Dolores": Ah! thy red lips, lascivious and luscious,
\Vith death in their amorous kiss!
Cling round us and clasp us and crush us
With bitings of agonized bliss! (etc.) ( D.M. )
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T H E F L 0 W E R S 0 F :\1 I J\" E R Y A THIS PHALANX is the revolution in person, austere at seventeen .
. . . The fire of her eyes subdued by spectacles that only the light of the mind may shine as it will ; sans-crinolines advancing to replace sans-culottes.
The girl-student and the young-lady-Burschen have nothing in common with the Traviata ladies. The Bacchantes have grown grey or bald, have grown old and retired, and the students have taken their place before they are out of their teens.
The Camelias and the Traviatas of the salons belonged to the time of Nicholas. ThPy were like the shovv-generals of the same time, the strutting dandies whose victories were won over their own soldiers, who knew every detail of military toilette, all the foppishness of the parade, and never soiled their uniforms with the blood of an enemy. The courtesan-generals, jauntily faisant le trottoir on the Nevsky, were cut down at one blow by the Crimean "'ar; and 'the intoxicating glamour of the ball,' the love-making of the boudoir and the noisy orgies of the generals'
ladies, were abruptly replaced by the academic lecture-hall and the dissecting-room, where the cropped student in spectacles studied the mysteries of nature. Then all the camellias and magnolias had to be forgotten, it had to be forgotten that there were two sexes. Before the truths of science, im Reiche der Wahrhcit, distinctions of sex are effaced.
Our Camelias stood for the Gironde, that is why they smack so much of Faublas.9
Our young-lady students are the Jacobins, Saint-Justs in a riding-habit-everything sharp-cut, pure, ruthless.
Our Camelias wore a mask, a loup from \Yarm Venice.
Our students wear a mask too, but it is a mask of ice from the f'\eva. The first may stick on, but the second will certainly melt awav; that, howevl'r, is in the future.
Ti1is is a real, conscious protest, a protest and breaking-point.
Cc n'cst pas WIC cmcute, c'cst unc revolution. Dissipation, luxury, jePring and fine clothes are put aside. Love and pnssion are in the fn r background. Aphrodite with her naked archer sulked and has withdrawn; Pallas Athene has taken her place with her spear and her owl. The Camelias were impelled by 11 The reference is to Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvray: Lf's arf'ntures du chevalier de Faublas ( B russels, 1 869) . (R.)
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vague emotion, indignation, insatiably languishing desire and they went on 'til they reached satiety. In this case they are impelled by an idea in which they believe, by the declaration of
'the rights of woman,' and they are fulfilling a duty laid upon them by that belief. Some abandon themselves on principle, others are unfaithful from a sense of duty. Sometimes these students go too far, but they ahvays remain children-disobedient and arrogant, but children. The earnestness of their radicalism shows that it is a matter of the head, of theory, not of the heart. They are passionate in general, but to particular encounters they bring no more 'p::�.thos' (as it was called in old days) than any Leontine. Perhaps less. The Leontines play, they play with fire, and very often, ablaze from head to foot, seek safety from the conflagration in the Seine ; drawn on by life before they have developed any pO\ver of reasoning, it is sometimes hard for them to conquer their hearts. Our students begin with criticism, with analysis ; to them, too, a great deal may happen, but there will be no surprises, no downfalls; they fall with a parachute of theory in their hands. They throw themselves into the stream with a handbook on swimming, and intentionally swim against the current. Whether they will swim long a livre ouvert I do not know, but they will certainly take their place in history, and will deserve to do so.
The most short-sighted people in the world have guessed as much.
Our old gentlemen, senators and m1msters, the fathers and grandfathers of their country, looked with a smile of indulgence and even encouragement at the aristocratic Camelias ( so long as they were not their sons' \Vives) . . . . But they did not like the students . . . so utterly different from the 'pretty rogues' with whom they had at one time liked to warm their old hearts with words.
For a long time the old gentlemen had been angry with the austere Nihilist girls and had sought an opportunity "of overtrumping them.
And then, as though of design, Karakozov fired his pistolshot. 1 0 . . . 'There it is, Your Majesty,' they began to whisper to him, 'that is what not dressing in uniform means . . . all these spectacles and shock-heads.' '\Vhat? not in uniform-dress as approved?' says the Tsar. 'Prescribe it most strictly! ' 'Lenience, IO D. V. Karakozov made an unsuccessf:d attt>mpt on the life of Alex·
ander II on 4th April, 1 866. (A.S.)
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lenience, Your Majesty! We have only been waitmg for your gracious permission to save the sacred person of Your Majesty.'
It was no jesting matter; they set to work unanimously. The Privy Council, the Senate, the Synod, the ministers, the bishops, the military commanders, the town-govemors and the other police took counsel together, thought, talked and decided in the first place to eject students of the female sex from the universities. During this, one of the bi�hops, fearing guile, recalled how once upon a time in the pseudo-Catholic Church a Pope Anna had been elected to the papacy, and would have offered his monks as inspectors . . . since 'there is no bodily shame before the eyes of the dead.' The living did not accept his suggestion: the generals, indeed, for their part supposed that such expert's duties could only be entrusted to an official of the highest rank, placed beyond temptation by his position and his monarch's confidence; there was an idea of offering the post to Adlerberg the Elder from the military department, and to Butkov from among the civilians. But this did not happen-it is said because the Grand Dukes were soliciting for the appointment.