the poet to the quick of his vanity.  “Canalis,” he said, “always reminds me of that brave man whom Frederic the Great called up and commended after a battle because his trumpet had never ceased tooting its one little tune.”  Canalis’s ambition was to enter political life, and he made capital of a journey he had taken to Madrid as secretary to the embassy of the Duc de Chaulieu, though it was really made, according to Parisian gossip, in the capacity of “attache to the duchess.”  How many times a sarcasm or a single speech has decided the whole course of a man’s life.  Colla, the late president of the Cisalpine republic, and the best lawyer in Piedmont, was told by a friend when he was forty years of age that he knew nothing of botany.  He was piqued, became a second Jussieu, cultivated flowers, and compiled and published “The Flora of Piedmont,” in Latin, a labor of ten years.  “I’ll master De Marsay some of these days!” thought the crushed poet; “after all, Canning and Chateaubriand are both in politics.”

Canalis would gladly have brought forth some great political poem, but he was afraid of the French press, whose criticisms are savage upon any writer who takes four alexandrines to express one idea.  Of all the poets of our day only three, Hugo, Theophile Gautier, and De Vigny, have been able to win the double glory of poet and prose-writer, like Racine and Voltaire, Moliere, and Rabelais,—­a rare distinction in the literature of France, which ought to give a man a right to the crowning title of poet.

So then, the bard of the faubourg Saint-Germain was doing a wise thing in trying to house his little chariot under the protecting roof of the present government.  When he became president of the court of Claims at the foreign office, he stood in need of a secretary,—­a friend who could take his place in various ways; cook up his interests with publishers, see to his glory in the newspapers, help him if need be in politics,—­in short, a cat’s paw and satellite.  In Paris many men of celebrity in art, science, and literature have one or more train-bearers, captains of the guard, chamberlains as it were, who live in the sunshine of their presence,—­aides-de-camp entrusted with delicate missions, allowing themselves to be compromised if necessary; workers round the pedestal of the idol; not exactly his servants, nor yet his equals; bold in his defence, first in the breach, covering all retreats, busy with his business, and devoted to him just so long as their illusions last, or until the moment when they have got all they wanted.  Some of these satellites perceive the ingratitude of their great man; others feel that they are simply made tools of; many weary of the life; very few remain contented with that sweet equality of feeling and sentiment which is the only reward that should be looked for in an intimacy with a superior man,—­a reward that contented Ali when Mohammed raised him to himself.