“On arriving at Paris, I went to walk upon the boulevard, proud of my anonymous great man.  He nudged me with his elbow, and said, pointing out a fat little ill-dressed man, ‘There’s so and so!’ He mentioned one of the seven or eight illustrious men in France.  I got ready my look of admiration, and I saw Adolphe rapturously doffing his hat to the truly great man, who replied by the curt little nod that you vouchsafe a person with whom you have doubtless exchanged hardly four words in ten years.  Adolphe had begged a look for my sake.  ’Doesn’t he know you?’ I said to my husband.  ’Oh, yes, but he probably took me for somebody else,’ replied he.

“And so of poets, so of celebrated musicians, so of statesmen.  But, as a compensation, we stop and talk for ten minutes in front of some arcade or other, with Messieurs Armand du Cantal, George Beaunoir, Felix Verdoret, of whom you have never heard.  Mesdames Constantine Ramachard, Anais Crottat, and Lucienne Vouillon threaten me with their blue friendship.  We dine editors totally unknown in our province.  Finally I have had the painful happiness of seeing Adolphe decline an invitation to an evening party to which I was not bidden.

“Oh!  Claire dear, talent is still the rare flower of spontaneous growth, that no greenhouse culture can produce.  I do not deceive myself:  Adolphe is an ordinary man, known, estimated as such:  he has no other chance, as he himself says, than to take his place among the utilities of literature.  He was not without wit at Viviers:  but to be a man of wit at Paris, you must possess every kind of wit in formidable doses.

“I esteem Adolphe:  for, after some few fibs, he frankly confessed his position, and, without humiliating himself too deeply, he promised that I should be happy.  He hopes, like numerous other ordinary men, to obtain some place, that of an assistant librarian, for instance, or the pecuniary management of a newspaper.  Who knows but we may get him elected deputy for Viviers, in the course of time?

“We live in obscurity; we have five or six friends of either sex whom we like, and such is the brilliant style of life which your letter gilded with all the social splendors.

“From time to time I am caught in a squall, or am the butt of some malicious tongue.  Thus, yesterday, at the opera, I heard one of our most ill-natured wits, Leon de Lora, say to one of our most famous critics, ’It takes Chodoreille to discover the Caroline poplar on the banks of the Rhone!’ They had heard my husband call me by my Christian name.  At Viviers I was considered handsome.  I am tall, well made, and fat enough to satisfy Adolphe!  In this way I learn that the beauty of women from the country is, at Paris, precisely like the wit of country gentleman.

“In short, I am absolutely nobody, if that is what you wish to know:  but if you desire to learn how far my philosophy goes, understand that I am really happy in having found an ordinary man in my pretended great one.