He had made no reputation beyond that
of the clever Mime,--he was not renowned for scholarship,--he had
made no mark in dramatic literature,--and his memory soon sank out
of sight in the whirling ocean of events as completely as though he
had never existed. There was no reality about him, and as a natural
consequence he went the way of all Shams. Had even his study of his
art been sincere and high--had he sought for the best, the greatest,
and most perfect work, and represented that only to the public, the
final judgment of the world might perhaps have given him a corner
beside Talma or Edmund Kean,--but the conceit of him, united to an
illiterate mind, was too great for the tolerance of the universal
Spirit of things which silently in the course of years pronounces
the last verdict on a man's work. Only a few of his own profession
remembered him as one who might have been great had he not been so
little;--and a few women laughed lightly, recalling the legion of
his "amours", and said, "Ce pauvre coquin, Miraudin!" That was all.
And for the mortal remains of Guy Beausire de Fontenelle, there came
a lady, grave and pale, clothed in deep black, with the nun's white
band crossing her severe and tranquil brows,--and she, placing a
great wreath of violets fresh gathered from the Pamphili woods, and
marked, "In sorrow, from Sylvie Hermenstein", on the closed coffin,
escorted her melancholy burden back to Paris, where in a stately
marble vault, to the solemn sound of singing, and amid the flare of
funeral tapers, with torn battle banners drooping around his bier,
and other decaying fragments of chivalry, the last scion of the once
great house of Fontenelle was laid to rest with his fathers.
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