and independently, the least that
can be expected is that the world should give itself the pleasure of
insulting him a little on his passage. In Belgium I met with unexpected
difficulties, thrown in my way by hostile compatriots. Pamphlets
containing incredible calumnies were published against me. I have reason
to speak with praise of the youth of Belgium, who decided to wait, and
to judge me only by my acts and words. In spite of obstacles I
succeeded. The present book, which was entirely composed and was to have
been published before the end of 1849, represents one of the two courses
which I delivered.

"P.S. I had almost forgotten to recur to the famous lists. The one
containing my name appeared at last in the _Revue retrospective_. 'M.
Sainte-Beuve, 100 francs,'--this was what was to be read there. The
fabulous ciphers had vanished. On seeing this entry a ray of light
dawned upon my memory. I recollected my smoky chimney of 1847, the
repair of which was to have cost about that sum. But for this incident,
I should never have been led to deliver the course now submitted to the
reader, and the one circumstance has occasioned my mention of the
other."

It must be confessed that the chimney that drove M. Sainte-Beuve into
temporary exile, and led to the production of a work in which his views
on many important topics were enunciated with a clearness and force he
had hitherto held in reserve, had smoked to some purpose. We may be
permitted to believe that his integrity had never been seriously
questioned; that the pretext for a brief abandonment of his beloved
Paris while she was in a state of excitement and dishabille had not been
altogether unwelcome. Though no admirer of the government of Louis
Philippe, he had, as he still acknowledges, appreciated "the mildness of
that _regime_, its humanity, and the facilities it afforded for
intellectual culture and the development of pacific interests of every
kind." The sudden overthrow, the turmoil, the vagaries that ensued, were
little to his taste. He was content to stand aside, availing himself of
the general dislocation to look around and choose for himself a new
field, a more independent position.

Here then begins the third, and, as we must suppose, the final stage of
his career. In September, 1849, he returned to Paris, feeling "a great
need of activity," as if his mind had been "refreshed by a year of study
and solitude." What was he to undertake? No sooner did the q