In short, the terrible Raoul is grotesque. His movements are jerky, as
if produced by imperfect machinery; his gait rejects all idea of

order, and proceeds by spasmodic zig-zags and sudden stoppages, which
knock him violently" target="_blank" title="ad.强暴地；猛烈地">violently against peaceable citizens on the streets and

boulevards of Paris. His conversation, full of caustic humor, of
bitter satire, follows the gait of his body; suddenly it abandons its

tone of vengeance and turns sweet, poetic, consoling, gentle, without
apparent reason; he falls into inexplicable silences, or turns

somersets of wit, which at times are somewhat wearying. In society, he
is boldlyawkward, and exhibits a contempt for conventions and a

critical air about things respected which makes him unpleasant to
narrow minds, and also to those who strive to preserve the doctrines

of old-fashioned, gentlemanly politeness; but for all that there is a
sort of lawlessoriginality about him which women do not dislike.

Besides, to them, he is often most amiably courteous; he seems to take
pleasure in making them forget his personal singularities, and thus

obtains a victory over antipathies which flatters either his vanity,
his self-love, or his pride.

"Why do you present yourself like that?" said the Marquise de
Vandenesse one day.

"Pearls live in oyster-shells," he answered, conceitedly.
To another who asked him somewhat the same question, he replied,--

"If I were charming to all the world, how could I seem better still to
the one woman I wish to please?"

Raoul Nathan imports this same natural disorder (which he uses as a
banner) into his intellectual" target="_blank" title="n.知识分子">intellectual life; and the attribute is not

misleading. his talent is very much that of the poor girls who go
about in bourgeois families to work by the day. He was first a critic,

and a great critic; but he felt himself cheated in that vocation. His
articles were equal to books, he said. The profits of theatrical work

then allured him; but, capable" target="_blank" title="a.无能力的；不能的">incapable of the slow and steady application
required for stage arrangement, he was forced to associate with

himself a vaudevillist, du Bruel, who took his ideas, worked them
over, and reduced them into those productive little pieces, full of

wit, which are written expressly for actors and actresses. Between
them, they had invented Florine, an actress now in vogue.

Humiliated by this association, which was that of the Siamese twins,
Nathan had produced alone, at the Theatre-Francais, a serious drama,

which fell with all the honors of war amid salvos of thundering
articles. In his youth he had once before appeared at the great and

noble Theatre-Francais in a splendid romantic play of the style of
"Pinto,"--a period when the classic reigned supreme. The Odeon was so

violently" target="_blank" title="ad.强暴地；猛烈地">violently agitated for three nights that the play was forbidden by the
censor. This second piece was considered by many a masterpiece, and

won him more real reputation than all his productive little pieces
done with collaborators,--but only among a class to whom little

attention is paid, that of connoisseurs and persons of true taste.
"Make another failure like that," said Emile Blondet, "and you'll be

immortal."
But instead of continuing in that difficult path, Nathan had fallen,

out of sheer necessity, into the powder and patches of eighteenth-
century vaudeville, costume plays, and the reproduction, scenically,

of successful novels.
Nevertheless, he passed for a great mind which had not said its last

word. He had, moreover, attempted permanentliterature, having
published three novels, not to speak of several others which he kept

in press like fish in a tank. One of these three books, the first
(like that of many writers who can only make one real trip into

literature), had obtained a very brilliant success. This work,
imprudently placed in the front rank, this really artistic work he was

never weary of calling the finest book of the period, the novel of the
century.

Raoul complained bitterly of the exigencies of art. He was one of
those who contributed most to bring all created work, pictures,

statues, books, building under the single standard of Art. He had
begun his career by committing a volume of verse, which won him a

place in the pleiades of living poets; among these verses was a
nebulous poem that was greatly admired. Forced by want of means to

keep on producing, he went from the theatre to the press, and from the
press to the theatre, dissipating and scattering his talent, but

believing always in his vein. His fame was therefore not unpublished
like that of so many great minds in extremity, who sustain themselves

only by the thought of work to be done.
Nathan resembled a man of genius; and had he marched to the scaffold,

as he sometimes wished he could have done, he might have struck his
brow with the famous action of Andre Chenier. Seized with political

ambition on seeing the rise to power of a dozen authors, professors,
metaphysicians, and historians, who encrusted themselves, so to speak,

upon the machine during the turmoils of 1830 and 1833, he regretted
that he had not spent his time on political instead of literary

articles. He thought himself superior to all those parvenus, whose
success inspired him with consuming jealousy. He belonged to the class

of minds ambitious of everything, capable of all things, from whom
success is, as it were, stolen; who go their way dashing at a hundred

luminous points, and settling upon none, exhausting at last the good-
will of others.

At this particular time he was going from Saint-Simonism into
republicanism, to return, very likely, to ministerialism. He looked

for a bone to gnaw in all corners, searching for a safe place where he
could bark secure from kicks and make himself feared. But he had the

mortification of finding he was held to be of no account by de Marsay,
then at the head of the government, who had no consideration whatever

for authors, among whom he did not find what Richelieu called a
consecutive mind, or more correctly, continuity of ideas; he counted

as any minister would have done on the constantembarrassment of
Raoul's business affairs. Sooner or later, necessity would bring him

to accept conditions instead of imposing them.
The real, but carefully concealed character of Raoul Nathan is of a

piece with his public career. He is a comedian in good faith, selfish
as if the State were himself, and a very clever orator. No one knows

better how to play off sentiments, glory in false grandeurs, deck
himself with moral beauty, do honor to his nature in language, and

pose like Alceste while behaving like Philinte. His egotism trots
along protected by this cardboard armor, and often almost reaches the

end he seeks. Lazy to a superlative degree, he does nothing, however,
until he is prodded by the bayonets of need. He is capable" target="_blank" title="a.无能力的；不能的">incapable of

continued labor applied to the creation of a work; but, in a paroxysm
of rage caused by wounded vanity, or in a crisis brought on by

creditors, he leaps the Eurotas and attains to some great triumph of
his intellect. After which, weary, and surprised at having created

anything, he drops back into the marasmus of Parisian dissipation;
wants become formidable; he has no strength to face them; and then he

comes down from his pedestal and compromises.
Influenced by a false idea of his grandeur and of his future,--the

measure of which he reckons on the noble success of one of his former
comrades, one of the few great talents brought to light by the

revolution of July,--he allows himself, in order to get out of his
embarrassments, certain laxities of principle with persons who are

friendly to him,--laxities which never come to the surface, but are
buried in private life, where no one ever mentions or complains of

them. The shallowness of his heart, the impurity of his hand, which
clasps that of all vices, all evils, all treacheries, all opinions,

have made him as inviolable as a constitutional king. Venial sins,
which excite a hue and cry against a man of high character, are

thought nothing of in him; the world hastens to excuse them. Men who
might otherwise be inclined to despise him shake hands with him,

fearing that the day may come when they will need him. He has, in
fact, so many friends that he wishes for enemies.

Judged from a literary point of view, Nathan lacks style and
cultivation. Like most young men, ambitious of literary fame, he

disgorges to-day what he acquired yesterday. He has neither the time
nor the patience to write carefully; he does not observe, but he

listens. Incapable of constructing a vigorously framed plot, he
sometimes makes up for it by the impetuous ardor of his drawing. He

"does passion," to use a term of the literary argot; but instead of
awaking ideas, his heroes are simply enlarged individualities, who

excite only fugitive sympathies; they are not connected with any of
the great interests of life, and consequently they represent nothing.

Nevertheless, Nathan maintains his ground by the quickness of his
mind, by those lucky hits which billiard-players call a "good stroke."

He is the cleverest shot at ideas on the fly in all Paris. His
fecundity is not his own, but that of his epoch; he lives on chance

events, and to control them he distorts their meaning. In short, he is
not TRUE; his presentation is false; in him, as Comte Felix said, is

the born juggler. Moreover, his pen gets its ink in the boudoir of an
actress.

Raoul Nathan is a fair type of the Parisian literary youth of the day,
with its false grandeurs and its real misery. He represents that youth