hole Christian world still lacks an historical monument like those which
dominate antiquity and consecrate the memory of its destinies--as its
pyramids, its obelisks, its pylons, and its porticos still dominate the
earth which was known to them, and thereby commemorate the grandeur of
antiquity.

If, then, we find everywhere evidence of this inclination to desert the
positive, to bring the ideal even into historic annals, I believe that
with greater reason we should be completely indifferent to historical
reality in judging the dramatic works, whether poems, romances, or
tragedies, which borrow from history celebrated characters. Art ought
never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty. Let
it be said that what is true in fact is secondary merely; it is only an
illusion the more with which it adorns itself--one of our prejudices
which it respects. It can do without it, for the Truth by which it must
live is the truth of observation of human nature, and not authenticity of
fact. The names of the characters have nothing to do with the matter. The
idea is everything; the proper name is only the example and the proof of
the idea.

So much the better for the memory of those who are chosen to represent
philosophical or moral ideas; but, once again, that is not the question.
The imagination can produce just as fine things without them; it is a
power wholly creative; the imaginary beings which it animates are endowed
with life as truly as the real beings which it brings to life again. We
believe in Othello as we do in Richard III., whose tomb is in
Westminster; in Lovelace and Clarissa as in Paul and Virginia, whose
tombs are in the Isle of France. It is with the same eye that we must
watch the performance of its characters, and demand of the Muse only her
artistic Truth, more lofty than the True--whether collecting the traits
of a character dispersed among a thousand entire individuals, she
composes from them a type whose name alone is imaginary; or whether she
goes to their tomb to seek and to touch with her galvanic current the
dead whose great deeds are known, forces them to arise again, and drags
them dazzled to the light of day, where, in the circle which this fairy
has traced, they re-assume unwillingly their passions of other days, and
begin again in the sight of their descendants the sad drama of life.
ALFRED DE VIGNY.
1827.

CINQ-MARS

BOOK 1.

CHAPTER I

THE ADIEU