From the Vicomte de Freydet
To Mademoiselle Germaine de Freydet,
Clos Jallanges, near Mousseaux, Loir et Cher.
My dear Sister,--I am going to give you a precise account of the way I
spend my time in Paris. I shall write every evening, and send you the
budget twice a week, as long as I stay here.
Well, I arrived this morning, Monday, and took up my quarters as usual
in my quiet little hotel in the Rue Servandoni, where the only sounds
of the great city which reach me are the bells of Saint Sulpice, and
the continual noise from a neighbouring forge, a sound of the rhythmical
beating of iron, which I love because it reminds me of our village. I
rushed off at once to my publisher. ‘Well, when do we come out?’
‘Your book? Why, it came out a week ago.’
Come out, indeed, and gone in too--gone into the depths of that grim
establishment of Manivet’s, which never ceases to pant and to reek with
the labour of giving birth to a new volume. This Monday, as it happened,
they were just sending out a great novel by Herscher, called _Satyra_.
The copies struck off--how many hundreds of thousands of them I don’t
know--were lying in stacks and heaps right up to the very top of the
establishment. You can fancy the preoccupation of the staff, and the
lost bewildered look of worthy Manivet himself, when I mentioned my poor
little volume of verse, and talked of my chances for the Boisseau prize.
I asked for a few copies to leave with the members of the committee
of award, and made my escape through _streets_--literally streets--of
_Satyra_, piled up to the ceiling. When I got into my cab, I looked at
my volume and turned over the pages. I was quite pleased with the solemn
effect of the title, ‘God in Nature.’ The capitals are perhaps a trifle
thin, when you come to look at them, not quite as black and impressive
to the eye as they might be. But it does not matter. Your pretty name,
‘Germaine,’ in the dedication will bring us luck. I left a couple of
copies at the Astiers’ in the Rue de Beaune. You know they no longer
occupy their rooms at the Foreign Office. But Madame Astier has still
her ‘Wednesdays.’ So of course I wait till Wednesday to hear what my old
master thinks of the book; and off I went to the Institute.
There again I found them as busy as a steam factory. Really the industry
of this big city is marvellous, especially to people like us, who spend
all the year in the peace of the open country. Found Picheral--you
remember Picheral, the polite gentleman in the secretary’s office,
who got you such a good place three years ago, when I received my
prize--well, I found Picheral and his clerks in the midst of a wild
hubbub of voices, shouting out names and addresses from one desk to
another, and surrounded on all sides by tickets of every kind, blue,
yellow, and green, for the platform, for the outer circle, for the
orchestra, Entrance A, Entrance B, &c. They were in the middle of
sending out the invitations for the great annual meeting, which is to be
honoured this year by the presence of a Royal Highness on his travels,
the Grand Duke Leopold. ‘Very sorry, my lord’--Picheral always says ‘my
lord,’ having learnt it, no doubt, from Chateaubriand--’ but I must ask
you to wait.’ ‘Certainly, M. Picheral, certainly.’
Picheral is an amusing old gentleman, very courtly. He reminds me
of Bonicar and our lessons in deportment in the covered gallery at
grandmamma’s house at Jallanges. He is as touchy, too, when crossed, as
the old dancing master used to be. I wish you had heard him talk to the
Comte de Bretigny, the ex-minister, one of the grandees of the Académie,
who came in, while I was waiting, to rectify a mistake about the number
of his tallies. I must tell you that the tally attesting attendance is
worth five shillings, the old crown-piece. There are forty Academicians,
which makes two hundred shillings per meeting, to be divided among those
present; so, you see, the fewer they are, the more money each gets.
Payment is made once a month in crown-pieces, kept in stout paper bags,
each with its little reckoning pinned on to it, like a washing bill.
Bretigny had not his complete number of tallies; and it was the most
amusing sight to see this man of enormous wealth, director of Heaven
knows how many companies, come there in his carriage to claim his ten
shillings. He only got five, which sum, after a long dispute, Picheral
tossed to him with as little respect as to a porter. But the ‘deity’
pocketed them with inexpressible joy; there is nothing like money won by
the sweat of your brow. For, my dear Germaine, you must not imagine
that there is any idling in the Académie. Every year there are fresh
bequests, new prizes instituted; that means more books to read, more
reports to engross, to say nothing of the dictionary and the orations.
‘Leave your book at their houses, but do not go in,’ said Picheral, when
he heard I was competing for the prize. ‘The extra work, which people
are always putting on the members, makes them anything but gracious to a
candidate.’
I certainly have not forgotten the way Ripault-Babin and Laniboire
received me, when I called on them about my last candidature. Of course,
when the candidate is a pretty woman, it is another story. Laniboire
becomes jocose, and Ripault-Babin, still gallant in spite of his eighty
years, offers the fair canvasser a lozenge, and says in his quavering
voice, ‘Touch it with your lips, and I will finish it.’ So they told
me in the secretary’s office, where the deities are discussed with a
pleasing frankness. ‘You are in for the Boisseau prize. Let me see; you
have for awarders two Dukes, three Mouldies, and two Players.’ Such, in
the office, is the familiar classification of the Académie Française!
‘Duke’ is the name applied to all members of the nobility and
episcopacy; Mouldies’ includes the professors and the learned men
generally; while a ‘Player’ denotes a lawyer, dramatic author,
journalist, or novelist.
After ascertaining the addresses of my Dukes, Mouldies, and Players, I
gave one of my ‘author’s copies’ to the friendly M. Picheral, and,
for form’s sake, left another for poor M. Loisillon, the Permanent
Secretary, who is said to be all but dead. Then I set to work to
distribute the remaining copies all over Paris. The weather was
glorious. As I passed through the Bois de Boulogne on my way back from
the house of Ripault-Babin (which reminded me of the lozenges), the
place was sweet with may and violets. I almost fancied myself at home
again on one of those first days of early spring when the air is fresh
and the sun hot; and I was inclined to give up everything and come back
to you at Jallanges. Dined on the boulevard alone and gloomy, and then
spent the rest of my evening at the Comédie Française, where they were
playing Desminières’ ‘_Le Dernier Frontin_.’ Desminières is one of the
awarders of the Boisseau prize, so I shall tell no one but you how his
verses bored me. The heat and gas gave me a headache. The actors
played as if Louis XIV. had been listening; and while they spouted
alexandrines, suggestive of the unrolling of a mummy’s bands, I was
still haunted by the scent of the hawthorn at Jallanges, and repeated
to myself the pretty lines of Du Bellay, a fellow-countryman, or a
neighbour at least:
More than your marbles hard I love the tender slate,
Than Tiber more the Loire, and France than Rome,
Mine own dear hills than Palatinus’ state,
More than the salt sea breeze the fragrantair of home.
_Tuesday_.--Walked about the town all the morning, stopping in front
of the booksellers’ shops to look for my book in the windows. _Satyra,
Satyra, Satyra! Satyra_ and nothing else to be seen everywhere, with a
paper slip round it, ‘Just out.’ Here and there, but very seldom, there
would be a poor miserable _God in Nature_ tucked away out of sight. When
no one was looking I put it on the top of the heap, well in view; but
people did not stop. One man did, though, in the Boulevard des Italiens,
a negro, a very intelligent-looking fellow. He turned over the pages for
five minutes, and then went away without buying the book. I should have
liked to present it to him.
Breakfasted in the corner of an English eating-house, and read the
papers. Not a word about me, not even an advertisement. Manivet is so
careless, very likely he has not so much as sent the orders, though he
declared he had. Besides, there are so many new books. Paris is deluged
with them. But for all that it is depressing to think that verses,
which ran like fire through one’s fingers, which seemed, in the feverish
delight of writing them, beautiful enough to fill the world with
brightness, are more lost now that they are gone into circulation, than
when they were but a confused murmuring in the brain of their author.
It reminds one of a ball-dress. When it is tried on in the sympathetic
family circle, it is expected to outshine and eclipse every dress in
the room; but under the blaze of the gas it is lost in the crowd. Well,
Herscher is a lucky fellow. He is read and understood. I met ladies
carrying snugly under their arms the little yellow volume just issued.
Alas, for us poor poets! It is all very well for us to rank ourselves
above and beyond the crowd. It is for the crowd, after all, that we
write. When Robinson Crusoe was on his desert island, cut off from
all the world and without so much as the hope of seeing a sail on the
horizon, would he have written verses, even if he had been a poetic
genius? Thought about this a great deal as I tramped through the Champs
Elysées, lost, like my book, in an unregarding stream.
I was coming back to my hotel, pretty glum, as you may imagine, when on
the Quai d’Orsay, just in front of the grass-grown ruin of the Cour
des Comptes, I knocked against a big fellow, strolling along in a brown
study. ‘Hullo, Freydet!’ said he. ‘Hullo, Védrine!’ said I. You’ll
remember my friend Védrine who, when he was working at Mousseaux, came
with his sweet young wife to spend an afternoon at Clos-Jallanges. He
is not a bit altered, except that he is a trifle grey at the temples.
He held by the hand the fine boy with the beaming eyes, whom you used to
admire. His head was erect, his movements slow and eloquent, his whole
carriage that of a superior being. A little way behind was Madame
Védrine pushing a perambulator, in which was a laughing little girl,
born since their visit to Touraine.
‘That makes three for her, counting me,’ said Védrine, with a wave of
his hand towards his wife; and the look of Madame when her eye rests on
her husband really does express the tender satisfaction of motherhood;
she is like a Flemish Madonna contemplating her Divine Child. Talked a
long time, leaning against the parapet of the quay; it did me good to
be with these honest folk. That is a man, anyhow, who cares nothing
whatever for success, and the public, and the prizes! With his
connections (he is cousin to Loisillon and to the Baron d’Huchenard), if
he chose--if he just put a little water into his strong wine--he might
have orders, and get the Biennial Prize, and be in the Institute in no
time. But nothing tempts him, not even fame. ‘Fame,’ he said, ‘I have
had a taste of it. I know what it is. When a man’s smoking, he sometimes
gets his cigar by the wrong end. Well, that’s fame: just a cigar with
the hot end and ash in your mouth.’
‘But, Védrine,’ said I, ‘if you work neither for fame nor for money----
yes, yes; I know you despise it; but, that being so, I say, why do you
take so much trouble?’
‘For myself and my personal satisfaction. It’s the desire for creation
and self-expression.’
Clearly here is a man who would have gone on with his work in the desert
island. He is a true artist, ever in quest of a new type, and in the
intervals of his labour endeavours by change of material and change of
conditions to satisfy his craving for a fresh revelation. He has made
pottery, enamels, mosaics, the fine mosaics so much admired in the
guard-room at Mousscaux. When the thing is done, the difficulty
overcome, he goes on to something else. At the present moment his great
idea is to try painting; and the moment he has finished his warrior, a
great bronze figure for the Rosen tomb, he intends, as he says, ‘to put
himself to oil.’ His wife always gives her approval, and rides behind
him on each of his hobbies. The right wife for an artist taciturn,
admiring, saving the grown-up boy from all that might spoil his dream
or catch his feet as he goes star-gazing along. She is the sort of woman
dear Germaine, to make a man want to be married. If I knew another such,
I should certainly bring her to Clos-Jallanges, and I am sure you would
love her. But do not be alarmed. There are not many of them; and we
shall go on to the end, living just by our two selves, as we do now.
Before we parted we fixed another meeting for Thursday, not at their
house at Neuilly, but at the studio on the Quai d’Orsay, where the
whole family spend the day together. This studio would seem to be the
strangest place. It is in a corner of the old Cour des Comptes. He has
got permission to do his work there, in the midst of wild vegetation and
mouldering heaps of stone. As I went away I turned to watch them walking
along the quay, father, mother, and children, all enveloped in the
calm light of the setting sun, which made a halo round them like a Holy
Family. Strung together a few lines on the subject in the evening at my
hotel; but I am put out by having neighbours, and do not like to spout.
I want my large study at Jallanges, with its three windows looking out
oh the river and the sloping vineyards.
And now we come to _Wednesday_, the great day and the great event!
I will tell you the story in full. I confess that I had been looking
forward to my call on the Astiers with much trepidation, which increased
to-day as I went up the broad moist steps of the staircase in the Rue de
Beaune. What was I going to hear said about my book? Would my old master
have had time to glance at it? His opinion means for me so very much. He
inspires me still with the same awe as when I was in his class, and in
his presence I shall always feel myself a schoolboy. His unerring and
impartial judgment must be that of the awarders of the prize. So you may
guess the tortures of impatience which I underwent in the master’s large
study, which he gives up to his wife for her reception.
It’s sadly different from the room at the Foreign Office. The table
at which he writes is pushed away into a recess behind a great screen
covered in old tapestry, which also hides part of the bookshelves.
Opposite, in the place of honour, is a portrait of Madame Astier in
her young days, wonderfully like her son, and also like old Réhu, whose
acquaintance I have just had the honour of making. The portrait has a
somewhat depressing air of elegance, cold and polished, like the large
uncarpeted room itself, with its sombre curtains and its outlook on
a still more sombre courtyard. But in comes Madame Astier, and her
friendly greeting brightens all the surroundings. What is there in the
air of Paris which preserves the beauty of a woman’s face beyond the
natural term, like a pastel under its glass? The delicate blonde with
her keen eyes looked to me three years younger than when I saw her last.
She began by asking after you, and how you were, dearest, showing great
interest in our domestic life. Then suddenly she said: ‘But your book,
let us talk about your book. How splendid! You kept me reading all
night.’ And she showered upon me well-chosen words of praise, quoted two
or three lines with great appropriateness, and assured me that my old
master was delighted; he had begged her to tell me so, in case he should
not be able to tear himself from his documents.
Red as you know I always am, I must have turned as scarlet as after
a hunt dinner. But my joy soon passed away when I heard what the poor
woman was led on into confiding to me about their embarrassments. They
have lost money; then came Astier’s dismissal; now the master works
night and day at his historical books, which take so long to construct
and cost so much to produce, and then are not bought by the public. Then
they have to help old Réhu, the grandfather, who has nothing but his
fees for attendance at the Académie; and at his age, ninety-eight,
you may imagine the care and indulgence necessary. Paul is a good son,
hardworking, and on the road to success, but of course the initial
expenses of his profession are tremendous. So Madame Astier conceals
their narrow means from him as well as from her husband. Poor dear man!
I heard his heavy even step overhead while his wife was stammering out,
with trembling lips and hesitating, reluctant words, a request that if I
could----
Ah, the adorable woman! I could have kissed the hem of her dress!
Now, my dear sister, you will understand the telegram you must have
received a little while ago, and who the £400 were for that I asked
for by return of post. I suppose you sent to Gobineau at once. The only
reason I did not telegraph direct to him is that, as we ‘go shares’ in
everything, our freaks of liberality ought, like the rest, to be common
to both. But it is terrible, is it not, to think of the misery concealed
under these brilliant and showy Parisian exteriors?
Five minutes after she had made these distressing disclosures people
arrived and the room was full; Madame Astier was conversing with a
complete self-possession and an appearance of happiness in voice and
manner which made my flesh creep. Madame Loisillon was there, the wife
of the Permanent Secretary. She would be much better employed in looking
after her invalid than in boring society with the charms of their
delightful suite, the most comfortable in the Institute, ‘with three
rooms more than it had in Villemain’s time.’ She must have told us this
ten times, in the pompous voice of an auctioneer, and in the hearing of
a friend living uncomfortably in rooms lately used for a _table d’hôte!_
No fear of such bad taste in Madame Ancelin, a name often to be seen
in the Society papers. A good fat round lady, with regular features and
high complexion, piping out epigrams, which she picks up and carries
round: a friendly creature, it must be allowed. She too had sat up all
night reading me. I begin to think it is the regular phrase. She
begged me to come to her house whenever I liked. It is one of the three
recognised meeting-places of the Académie. Picheral would say that
Madame Ancelin, mad on the theatre, welcomes more especially the
‘Players,’ Madame Astier the ‘Mouldies,’ while the Duchess Padovani
monopolises the ‘Dukes,’ the aristocracy of the Institute. But really
these three haunts of fame and intrigue communicate one with another,
for on Wednesday in the Rue de Beaune I saw a whole procession of
deities of every description. There was Danjou the writer of
plays, Rousse, Boissier, Dumas, de Brétigny, Baron Huchenard of the
Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and the Prince d’Athis of the Sciences
Morales et Politiques. There is a fourth circle in process of formation,
collected round Madame Eviza, a Jewess with full cheeks and long narrow
eyes, who flirts with the whole Institute and sports its colours; she
has green embroideries on the waistcoat of her spring costume, and
a little bonnet trimmed with wings _à la_ Mercury. She carries her
flirtations a little too far. I heard her say to Danjou, whom she was
asking to come and see her, ‘The attractions of Madame Ancelin’s house
are for the palate, those of mine for the heart.’
‘I require both lodging and board,’ was the cold reply of Danjou.
Danjou, I believe, covers the heart of a cynic under his hard
impenetrable mask and his black stiff thatch, like a shepherd of
Latium. Madame Eviza is a fine talker, and is mistress of considerable
information; I heard her quoting to the old Baron Huchenard whole
sentences from his ‘Cave Man,’ and discussing Shelley with a boyish
magazine writer, neat and solemn, with a pointed chin resting on the top
of a high collar.
When I was young it was the fashion to begin with verse-writing,
whatever was to follow, whether prose, business, or the bar. Nowadays
people begin with literary criticism, generally a study on Shelley.
Madame Astier introduced me to this young gentleman, whose views carry
weight in the literary world; but my moustaches and the colour of my
skin, as brown as that of a sapper-and-miner, probably failed to please
him. We spoke only a few words, while I watched the performance of the
candidates and their wives or relatives, who had come to show themselves
and to see how the ground lay. Ripault-Babin is very old, and Loisillon
cannot last much longer; and around these seats, which must soon be
vacant, rages a war of angry looks and poisoned words.
Dalzon the novelist, your favourite, was there; he has a kindly, open,
intellectual face, as you would expect from his books. But you would
have been sorry to see him cringing and sniggering before a nobody like
Brétigny, who has never done anything, but occupies in the Academic
the seat reserved for the man of the world, as in the country we keep
a place for the poor man in our Twelfth Night festivities. And not only
did he court Brétigny, but every Academician who came in. There he was,
listening to old Rehu’s stories, laughing at Danjou’s smallest jokes
with the ‘counterfeited glee’ with which at Louis-le-Grand we rewarded
what Védrine used to call ‘usher’s wit.’ All this to bring his twelve
votes of last year up to the required majority.
Old Jean Réhu looked in at his granddaughter’s for a few minutes,
wonderfully fresh and erect, well buttoned up in a long frock coat. He
has a little shrivelled face, looking as if it had been in the fire, and
a short cottony beard, like moss on an old stone. His eyes are bright
and his memory marvellous, but he is deaf, and this depresses him
and drives him into long soliloquies about his interesting personal
recollections, To-day he told us about the household of the Empress
Joséphine at Malmaison; his ‘compatriote,’ he calls her, both being
Creoles from Martinique. He described her, in her muslins and cashmere
shawls, smelling of musk so strongly as to take one’s breath away,
and surrounded with flowers from the colonies. Even in war time these
flowers, by the gallantry of the enemy, were allowed to pass the lines
of their fleet. He also talked of David’s studio, as it was under the
Consulate, and did us the painter, rating and scolding his pupils with
his mouth all awry and the remains of his dinner in his cheek. After
each extract from the long roll of his experience, the patriarch shakes
his head solemnly, gazes into space, and says in his firm tones, ‘That’s
a thing that I have seen.’ It is his signature, as it were, put at the
bottom of the picture to prove it genuine. I ought to say that, with the
exception of Dalzon, who pretended to be drinking in his words, I was
the only person in the room who attended to the old man’s tales. They
seemed to me much more worth hearing than the stories of a certain
Lavaux, a journalist, or librarian, or something--a dreadful retailer
of gossip, whatever else he may be. The moment he came in there was a
general cry, ‘Ah, here’s Lavaux!’ and a circle was formed round him at
once, all laughing and enjoying themselves. Even the frowning ‘deities’
revel in his anecdotes. He has a smooth-shaven, quasi-clerical face and
goggle eyes. He prefaces all his tales and witticisms with such remarks
as ‘I was saying to De Broglie,’ or ‘Dumas told me the other day,’ or ‘I
have it from the Duchess herself,’ backing himself up with the biggest
names and drawing his instances from all quarters. He is a pet of the
ladies, whom he posts up in all the intrigues of the Académie and the
Foreign Office, the world of letters and the world of fashion. He
is very intimate with Danjou, and a constant companion of the Prince
d’Athis, with whom he came in. Dalion and the young critic of Shelley
he patronises; and indeed he exercises a power and authority quite
inexplicable to me.
In the medley of stories which he produced from his inexhaustible
chops--most of them were riddles to a simple rustic like myself--one
only struck me as amusing. It was the mishap which occurred to a young
Count Adriani, of the Papal Guard. He was going through Paris, in
attendance upon a reverend personage, to take a cardinal’s hat and cap
to some one or other, and the story is that he left the insignia at the
house of some fair lady whom he met with as he left the train, and of
whom he knew neither the name nor the address, being, poor young man!
a stranger in Paris. So he had to write off to the Papal Court for new
specimens of the ecclesiastical headgear to replace the first, which the
lady must find entirely superfluous. The best part of the story is that
the little Count Adriani is the Nuncio’s own nephew, and that at the
Duchess’s last party--she is called ‘the Duchess’ in Academic circles
just as she is at Mousseaux--he told his adventure quite naively in his
broken French. Lavaux imitates it wonderfully.
In the midst of the laughter and the exclamations, ‘Charming! Ah, what
a man Lavaux is!’ etc., I asked Madame Ancelin, who was sitting near me,
who Lavaux was, and what he did. The good lady was amazed. ‘Lavaux? You
don’t know him? He is the Duchess’s zebra.’ Thereupon she departed in
pursuit of Danjou, and left me much the wiser! Really Parisian society
is a most extraordinary thing; its vocabulary alters every season.
Zebra--a zebra--what can it possibly mean? But I began to see that I was
staying much too long, and that my old master was not going to appear;
it was time I went. I made my way through the chairs to say good-bye to
my hostess, and as I passed saw Mademoiselle Moser whimpering before
Brétigny’s white waistcoat. Poor Moser became a candidate ten years ago,
and now has lost all hopes. So he goes nowhere himself, but sends his
daughter, a lady of a certain age, not at all pretty, who plays the part
of Antigone, climbs up to the top floors, makes herself general
messenger and drudge to the Academicians and their wives, corrects
proofs, nurses the rheumatic, and spends her forlorn maidenhood in
running after the Academic chair which her father will never get.
Dressed quietly in black, with an unbecoming bonnet, she stood in the
doorway; and near her was Dalzon, very much excited, between two members
of the Académie who looked judicial. He was protesting violently and
with a choking voice. ‘It’s not true, it’s a shame, I never wrote it!’
Here was a mystery; and Madame Astier, who might have enlightened me,
was herself engaged in close confabulation with Lavaux and the Prince
d’Athis. You must have seen the Prince d’Athis driving about Mousseaux
with the Duchess. ‘Sammy,’ as he is called, is a long, thin, bald man,
with stooping shoulders, a crinkled face as white as wax, and a black
beard reaching half down his chest, as if his hair, falling from his
head, had lodged upon his chin. He never speaks, and when he looks at
you seems shocked at your daring to breathe the same air as he. He is
high in the service, has a close, mysterious, English air which reminds
you that he is Lord Palmerston’s great-nephew, and is in high repute at
the Institute and on the Quai d’Orsay. He is said to be the only French
diplomatist whom Bismarck never dared to look in the face. It is
supposed that he will very shortly have one of the great Embassies. Then
what will become of the Duchess? To leave Paris and follow him would be
a serious thing for a leader of society. And then abroad the world might
refuse to accept their equivocal relations, which here are looked upon
almost as marriage, in consideration of the propriety of their conduct
and their respect for appearances, and considering also the sad state of
the Duke, half paralysed and twenty-years older than his wife, who is
also his niece.
The Prince, was no doubt discussing these grave matters with Lavaux and
Madame Astier when I drew near. A man just arrived in any society, no
matter where, soon finds how much he is ‘out of it,’ He understands
neither the phrases current nor the thoughts, and is a nuisance. I was
just leaving when that kind Madame Astier called me back, saying, ‘Will
you not go up and see him? He will be so glad.’ So I went up a narrow
staircase in the wall to see my old master. I heard his loud voice from
the end of the passage, ‘Is that you, Fage?’
‘No, sir,’ said I.
‘Why, it’s Freydet! Take care; keep your head down.’
It was in fact impossible to stand upright under the sloping roof. What
a different place from the Foreign Office, where I last saw him, in a
lofty gallery lined with portfolios.
‘A kennel, is it not?’ said the worthy man with a smile; ‘but if you
knew what treasures I have here,’--and he waved his hand towards a large
set of pigeonholes containing at least 10,000 important MS. documents,
collected by him during the last few years. ‘There is history in
those drawers,’ he went on, growing more animated and playing with his
magnifying glass; ‘history new and authentic, let them say what
they will.’ But in spite of his words he seemed to me gloomy and
uncomfortable. He has been treated very badly. First came that cruel
dismissal; and now, as he has continued to publish historical works
based on new documents, people say that he has plundered from the
Bourbon papers. This calumny was started in the Institute, and is traced
to Baron Huchenard, who calls his collection of MSS. ‘the first in
France,’ and hates to be outdone by that of Astier. He tries to revenge
himself by treacherous criticisms, launched, like an assegai, from the
bush. ‘Even my letters of Charles V.,’ said Astier, ‘even those they
want now to prove false. And on what ground if you please? For a mere
trifling error, “Maître Rabelais” instead of “Frère Rabelais.” As if
an emperor’s pen never made a slip! It’s dishonest, that’s what it is!’
And, seeing that I shared his indignation, my good old master grasped
me by both hands and said, ‘But there! enough of these slanders. Madame
Astier told you, I suppose, about your book? There is still a little too
much for my taste; but I am pleased with it on the whole.’ What there is
‘too much’ of in my poetry is what he calls ‘the weed’ of the fancy.
At school he was always at it, plucking it out, and rooting it up. Now,
dear Germaine, attend. I give you the last part of our conversation,
word for word.
_I._ Do you think, sir, that I have any chance of the Boisseau prize?
_M. A._ After such a book as that, my dear boy, it is not a prize you
deserve, but a seat. Loisillon is hard hit; Ripault cannot last much
longer. Don’t move; leave it to me; henceforward I look upon you as a
candidate.
I don’t know what I said in reply. I was so confused that I feel still
as if I were dreaming. Me, me, in the Académie Française! Take good care
of yourself, dearest, and get your naughty legs well again; for you
must come to Paris on the great occasion, and see your brother, with his
sword at his side and his green coat embroidered with palms, take his
place among all the greatest men of France! Why, it makes me dizzy now!
So I send you a kiss, and am off to bed.
Your affectionate brother,
ABEL DE FREYDET.
You may imagine that among all these doings I have quite forgotten the
seeds, matting, shrubs, and all the rest of my purchases. But I will see
about them soon, as I shall stay here some time. Astier-Réhu advised me
to say nothing, but to go about in Academic society. To show myself and
be seen is the great point.