of a truth, you are of everybody; for who can remain insensible to those treasures of.... [Here my modesty refuses to copy the text before me].  There is but one opinion upon this subject.  Royalists and democrats, disciples of tradition or fanatics of fancy, voltigeurs of the old monarchy or reformers of the future, are all unanimous in saluting, as a rising glory of our literature, the pure and noble talent which.... [Here my modesty again refuses to copy the text before me].

    “P.S.  I send you herewith two copies of my works, which I submit
    to your able and kind criticism.”

Nor were appeals like these the only sort of seduction to which I was exposed when I became the literary critic of “L’Assemblee Nationale.”  The eminent men, sublime philosophers like Monsieur Victor Cousin and Monsieur de Remusat, incomparable historians like Monsieur Guizot, Monsieur Thiers, Monsieur de Barante, admirable literary men like Monsieur Villemain and Monsieur de Salvandy, (all of whom had spent their lives in laying down political maxims, and in expressing their astonishment that French heads were too hard or French nature too fickle to conform French life to the profound maxims which they, the former, had weighed and meditated in the silence of their study,) who had for eighteen years ruled France, found themselves, one February morning in 1848, stripped of power and of place.  They returned to their favorite studies, and produced new works, to the delight of lettered men everywhere.  But, as the human heart, even in the beat of men, has its weaknesses, these eminent men, who could not for a single instant doubt either their talents or their success or the universal admiration in which they were held, were a little too fond of hearing these agreeable truths told them in articles devoted especially to their works.  Now to heighten the zeal of the authors of these articles, the eminent retired statesmen held in their hands an infallible method:  They would take these trumpeters of fame aside, and, without contracting any positive engagement, would distinctly hint to these critics, (a word to the wise is sufficient!) that, after a few years of these excellent and useful services in the daily press or in the periodicals, they, the former, would elect the latter members of the French Academy.  A seat in the French Academy was the object of the most ardent ambition.  No sooner was the breath out of the body of one of the forty members of the French Academy than twenty candidates entered the lists, and canvassed, canvassed, canvassed the nine-and-thirty living Academicians, without losing a minute in eating, drinking, or sleeping, until the election took place.

You may now see the various sorts of seductions which assailed me during this short and brilliant period of my literary life.  The world lay smiling before me, and I felt quite happy,—­when I met Monsieur Louis Veuillot, the eminent editor of “L’Univers,” which the government has since suppressed.