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 His fame was therefore not unpublished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.
Pages:
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59