“How do you look at it?” he asks.
“In both ways.”
“Empis?---”
“And _tant pis_!”
March 16, 1847.
At the Academy to-day, while listening to the poems, bad to the point
of grotesqueness, that have been sent for the competition of 1847, M. de
Barante remarked: “Really, in these times, we no longer know how to make
mediocre verses.”
Great praise of the poetical and literary excellence of these times,
although M. de Barante was not conscious of it.
April 22, 1847.
Election of M. Ampere. This is an improvement upon the last. A slow
improvement. But Academies, like old people, go slowly.
During the session and after the election Lamartine sent to me by an
usher the following lines:
C’est un état peu prospere
D’aller d’Empis en Ampere.