“There is a good deal to be said on that point,” rejoined Clelia, with an air that all at once became very serious, almost threatening.

“What!” exclaimed Fabrice, in alarm, “am I in danger of losing the small place I have won in your heart, my sole joy in this world?”

“Yes,” she replied.  “Although your reputation in society is that of a gentleman and gallant man, I have reason to believe you are not acting ingenuously toward me.  But I don’t wish to discuss this matter to-day.”

This strange exordium cast an element of embarrassment into the conversation, and tears were often in the eyes of both.

Copyrighted by George H. Richmond and Company.

WILLEM BILDERDIJK

(1756-1831)

Willem Bilderdijk’s personality, even more than his genius, exerted so powerful an influence over his time that it has been said that to think of a Dutchman of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was to think of Bilderdijk.  He stands as the representative of the great literary and intellectual awakening which took place in Holland immediately after that country became part of the French empire.  The history of literature has many examples of how, under political disturbances, the agitated mind has sought refuge in literary and scientific pursuits, and it seemed at that time as if Dutch literature was entering a new Golden Age.  The country had never known better poets; but it was the poetry of the eighteenth century, to quote Ten Brink, “ceremonious and stagy.”

In ‘Herinnering van mijne Kindheit’ (Reminiscences of My Childhood), a book which is not altogether to be relied upon, Bilderdijk gives a charming picture of his father, a physician in Amsterdam, but speaks of his mother in less flattering terms.  He was born in Amsterdam in 1756.  At an early age he suffered an injury to his foot, a peasant boy having carelessly stepped on it; attempts were made to cure him by continued bleedings, and the result was that he was confined to his bed for twelve years.  These years laid the foundation of a character lacking in power to love and to call forth love, and developing into an almost fierce hypochondria, full of complaints and fears of death.  In these years, however, he acquired the information and the wonderful power of language which appear in his sinewy verse.

One of his poems, dated 1770, has been preserved, but is principally interesting as a first attempt.  Others, written in his twentieth year, were prize poems, and are sufficiently characterized by their titles:—­’Kunst wordt door Arbeid verkregen’ (Art came through Toil), and ‘Inloed der Dichthunst op het Staets bestuur’ (Influence of Poetry on Statesmanship).  When he went to Leyden in 1780 to study law, he was already famous.  His examinations passed, he settled at the Hague to practice, and in 1785 married Katharina Rebekka Woesthoven.  The following year he published his romance, ‘Elius,’ in seven songs.  The romance ultimately became his favorite form of verse; but this was not the form now called romance.  It was the rhymed narrative of the eighteenth century, written with endless care and reflection, and in his case with so superior a treatment of language that no Dutch poet since Huygens had approached it.