How dreary ’tis for women to sit still
     On winter nights by solitary fires,
     And hear the nations praising them far off.

     AURORA LEIGH.

Abolished by the National Convention of 1793, re-established in 1795, reformed by the first Napoleon in 1803, and remodelled in 1816 on the restoration of the Bourbons, the Academie Francaise, despite its changes of fortune, name, and government, is a liberal and splendid institution.  It consists of forty members, whose office it is to compile the great dictionary, and to enrich, purify, and preserve the language.  It assists authors in distress.  It awards prizes for poetry, eloquence, and virtue; and it bestows those honors with a noble impartiality that observes no distinction of sex, rank, or party.  To fill one of the forty fauteuils of the Academie Francaise is the darling ambition of every eminent Frenchman of letters.  There the poet, the philosopher, the historian, the man of science, sit side by side, and meet on equal ground.  When a seat falls vacant, when a prize is to be awarded, when an anniversary is to be celebrated, the interest and excitement become intense.  To the political, the fashionable, or the commercial world, these events are perhaps of little moment.  They affect neither the Bourse nor the Budget.  They exercise no perceptible influence on the Longchamps toilettes.  But to the striving author, to the rising orator, to all earnest workers in the broad fields of literature, they are serious and significant circumstances.

Living out of society as I now did, I knew little and cared less for these academic crises.  The success of one candidate was as unimportant to me as the failure of another; and I had more than once read the crowned poem of the prize essay without even glancing at the name or the fortunate author.

Now it happened that, pacing to and fro under the budding acacias of the Palais Royal garden one sunny spring-like morning, some three or four weeks after the conversation last recorded, I was pursued by a persecuting newsvender with a hungry eye, mittened fingers, and a shrill voice, who persisted in reiterating close against my ear:—­

“News of the day, M’sieur!—­news of the day.  Frightful murder in the Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine—­state of the Bourse—­latest despatches from the seat of war—­prize poem crowned by the Academie Francaise—­news of the day, M’sieur!  Only forty centimes!  News of the day!”

I refused, however, to be interested in any of those topics, turned a deaf ear to his allurements, and peremptorily dismissed him.  I then continued my walk in solitary silence.

At the further extremity of the square, near the Galerie Vitree and close beside the little newspaper kiosk, stood a large tree since cut down, which at that time served as an advertising medium, and was daily decorated with a written placard, descriptive of the contents of the Moniteur, the Presse, and other leading papers.  This placard was generally surrounded by a crowd of readers, and to-day the crowd of readers was more than usually dense.