appear to be
inconvenienced.'

What brings Gautier especially to mind is the appearance within a few
weeks of an amusing little volume entitled _Le Romantisme et l'editeur
Renduel_. Its chief value consists, no doubt, in what the author, M.
Adolphe Jullien, has to say about Renduel. That noted publisher must
have been a man of unusual gifts and unusual fortune. He was a
fortunate man because he had the luck to publish some of the best
works of Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Theophile Gautier, Alfred de
Musset, Gerard de Nerval, Charles Nodier, and Paul Lacroix; and he was
a gifted man because he was able successfully to manage his troop of
geniuses, neither quarreling with them himself nor allowing them to
quarrel overmuch with one another. Renduel's portrait faces the
title-page of the volume, and there are two portraits of him besides.
There are fac-similes of agreements between the great publisher and
his geniuses. There is a famous caricature of Victor Hugo with a brow
truly monumental. There is a caricature of Alfred de Musset with a
figure like a Regency dandy,--a figure which could have been acquired
only by much patience and unremitted tight-lacing; also one of Balzac,
which shows that that great novelist's waist-line had long since
disappeared, and that he had long since ceased to care. What was a
figure to him in comparison with the flesh-pots of Paris!

One of the best of these pictorial satires is Roubaud's sketch of
Gautier. It has a teasing quality, it is diabolically fascinating. It
shows how great an art caricature is in the hands of a master.

But the highest virtue of a good new book is that it usually sends the
reader back to a good old book. One can hardly spend much time upon
Renduel; he will remember that Gautier has described that period when
hero-worship was in the air, when the sap of a new life circulated
everywhere, and when he himself was one of many loyal and enthusiastic
youths who bowed the head at mention of Victor Hugo's name. The reader
will remember, too, that Gautier was conspicuous in that band of
Romanticists who helped to make _Hernani_ a success the night of its
first presentation. Gautier believed that to be the great event of his
life. He loved to talk about it, dream about it, write of it.

There was a world of good fellowship among the young artists,
sculptors, and poets of that day. They took real pleasure in shouting
Hosanna to Victor Hugo and to one another. Even Zola, the