in his stead, of the Coadjutor of Strasbourg, Armand de Rohan-Soubise.  “Splendid as your triumph may be,” wrote Boileau to M. de Lamoignon, “I am persuaded, sir, from what I know of your noble and modest character, that you are very sorry to have caused this displeasure to a body which is after all very illustrious, and that you will attempt to make it manifest to all the earth.  I am quite willing to believe that you had good reasons for acting as you have done.”  The Academy from that moment regarded the title it conferred as irrevocable:  it did not fill up the place of the Abbe de St. Pierre when it found itself obliged to exclude him from its sittings, by order of Louis XV.; it did not fill up the place of Mgr.  Dupanloup, when he thought proper to send in his resignation.  In spite of court intrigues, it from that moment maintained its independence and its dignity.  “M.  Despreaux,” writes the banker Leverrier to the Duke of Noailles, “represented to the Academy, with a great deal of heat, that all was rack and ruin, since it was nothing more but a cabal of women that put Academicians in the place of those who died.  Then he read out loud some verses by M. de St. Aulaire. . . .  Thus M. Despreaux, before the eyes of everybody, gave M. de St. Aulaire a black ball, and nominated, all by himself, M. de Mimeure.  Here, monseigneur, is proof that there are Romans still in the world, and, for the future, I will trouble you to call M. Despreaux no longer your dear poet, but your dear Cato.”

With his extreme deafness, Boileau had great difficulty in fulfilling his Academic duties.  He was a member of the Academy of medals and inscriptions, founded by Colbert in 1662, “in order to render the acts of the king immortal, by deciding the legends of the medals struck in his honor.”  Pontchartrain raised to forty the number of the members of the petite acadamie, extended its functions, and intrusted it thenceforth with the charge of publishing curious documents relating to the history of France.  “We had read to us to-day a very learned work, but rather tiresome,” says Boileau to M. Pontchartrain, “and we were bored right eruditely; but afterwards there was an examination of another which was much more agreeable, and the reading of which attracted considerable attention.  As the reader was put quite close to me, I was in a position to hear and to speak of it.  All I ask you, to complete the measure of your kindnesses, is to be kind enough to let everybody know that, if I am of so little use at the Academy of Medals, it is equally true that I do not and do not wish to obtain any pecuniary advantage from it.”