The Reinvention of Love

enamoured of me also. She has asked me to take her to dinner tonight. Do you know of anywhere nearby where we could go?”
    Mathilde touches my arm and I flinch as it is still sore from winding the mechanical piano. “You don’t have muchexperience at court, do you, Sainte-Beuve?”
    “No, I suppose I don’t.”
    “It is customary, at Compiègne, for a young woman to ask a man to escort her to the dining room. Here,” says Mathilde, squeezing my arm affectionately, “at the château.”
    Napoleon III believes in social reform. He has been impressed with the Industrial Revolution in England which he witnessed when he was there in exile, and so his new Paris is modelled on the new London. I preferred the old labyrinth of streets to the modern boulevards. It is harder to hide in the new Paris.
    An advocate of science and technology, the Emperor seems a lot less interested in literature. My attempts at conversation with him about books at dinner the next night fall flat. He keeps asking me to speak up, then loses interest in my questions about his reading habits and turns to talk to the man on the other side of him about the quality of the dinner wine.
    When the list of Senators is published, I am not on it.
    Like my admittance into the Académie française, my elevation into the Senate takes two tries.
    And now comes the betrayal, and the end of my friendship with Napoleon’s niece.
    I should not have been surprised that the members of the Senate were cronies of the Emperor. Other writers in Paris assumed that I was also of this camp. They felt that I had defected from their midst, that my liberal views had just been a pretence, that my presence in the Senate was a reflection of my true political feelings. What is more true is that I am not a political man – meaning, I am not a man who is driven by politics. I have always been devoted to literature. Devotion and drive are two different things. Someone with drive likes to lead. Someone with devotion likes to serve. Politics are always the province of those with drive and direction. Action is requiredto advance a political movement. I had not really given up my liberal views, I was just not defined by them.
    So, when one of the Senators attacked the work of Renan in a speech, I defended my Magny dining companion. And when the ratepayers of Saint-Etienne petitioned the Senate to ban certain books from their local library, I made a speech against this. (The books submitted for banning included
Candide
by Voltaire, the works of Rousseau, and all the novels of Balzac and George Sand.)
    I was accused of being an atheist. One of my fellow Senators challenged me to a duel, which, thankfully, the President of the Senate dismissed.
    Next up was the Press Law, which proposed charging anyone who wished to start a newspaper 50,000 francs. Of course, I had to make a speech about the inherent freedom of the press. During this speech, some of the Senators actually walked out of the chambers.
    Then there was the education bill, which proposed denying a liberal education to the young. My speech about the absurdity of this brought a delegation of students to my house with flowers. I had tea with them in the garden. It was all very pleasant.
    None of my liberal Senate speeches went over well with Princess Mathilde. She regarded my words and actions as treacherous. To her mind, I had supported Bonapartism until I became a Senator and then, when I was safely ensconced in the Senate, I had renounced the politics of the man who had put me there.
    She had a point.
    I am in my sixties when I become a Senator. I am in my sixties, and my health has begun to fail. I am afflicted in my weakest spot, by the condition that has plagued me all my adult life– hypospadias. My bladder has become obstructed. I have had an operation to remove a stone, but nothing has really improved since then. I am still in pain. My bladder is weak and I am forced to use a catheter. During the course of a dinner party I have to rise three or four times to relieve myself. I don’t believe that I have long to live. This condition that has made my life miserable will inevitably be the death of me.
    So I mind losing the friendship of Princess Mathilde very much. I mind not having a confidante. I miss the intimacy. It cannot be said that this friendship was merely one of convenience for me.
    But still, this is said.
    I have done enough work. I do not have books hovering inside me, waiting to be released. I have