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[Illustration: ALPHONSE DE LAMARATINE.]
RAPHAEL, or
1905
Comédie d'Amour Series
It is all very well for Lamartine to explain, in his original prologue,that the touching, fascinating and pathetic story of Raphael was theexperience of another man. It is well known that these feeling pagesare but transcripts of an episode of his own heart-history. That thetale is one of almost feminine sentimentality is due, in some measure,perhaps, to the fact that, during his earliest and most impressionableyears, Lamartine was educated by his mother and was greatly influencedby her ardent and poetical character. Who shall say how much depends onone's environment during these tender years of childhood, and how oftenhas it not been proved that "the child is father to the man?" Themarvel of it is that a man so exquisitely sensitive, of suchextraordinary delicacy of feeling, should have been able, in lateryears, to stand the storm and stress of political life and the graveresponsibilities of statesmanship.
Although not written in metrical form, Raphael is really a poem—aprose poem. Never upon canvas of painter were spread more delicatetints, hues, colors, shadings, blendings and suggestions, than in thesepages. Not only do we find ourselves, in the descriptions of scenery,near to Nature's heart, but, in the story itself, near to the heart ofman. Aix in Savoy was, in Lamartine's time, a fashionable resort forvalitudinarians and invalids. Among the patrons of the place was MadameCharles, whose memory Lamartine has immortalized as "Julie" in Raphaeland as "Elvire" in the beautiful lines of the Méditations. In drawingthe character "Julie," idealism and sentimentalism have full play. Thewhole story is romantic in the extreme. The influence of Byron isclearly to be seen. The beautiful hills of Savoy, tinged with themelancholy tints of autumn, were a fit setting for the meeting with thefair invalid. Besides physical invalidism, the pair were soul-sick andheart-sick. Such were their points of sympathy, an affinity was themost natural thing in the world. "Ships that pass in the night" werethese two creatures, stranded by illness, "out of the world's way,hidden apart." At the feast of pure, unselfish, romantic love thatfollowed, there was always a death's-head present, always the sinkingfear, always the mute resignation on one side or the other. Death andlove have been a combination that poets have used since the worldbegan. And so, as the early snow whitened the pines on the hilltops ofSavoy, this pathetic and ultra-sentimental love-affair between thebanished Parisienne and the poet had its beginning. That it couldhave but one ending the reader knows from the start. But with whatbreathless interest do we follow this history of love! We seem to beadmitted to the confidences of beings of another sphere, to celestialheights of affection. We hear the heart-beats and see the glances ofthe languid, languorous eyes. The universe itself seems to stand stillfor these two lovers. Their heads are among the stars, their hearts inheaven. Their love is as pure as a sonnet of Keats, as ineffable asshimmering starlight. Day by day we trace its cur