and characters of those who he
sees have courageously refused to squander their strength, sap, and aims
as he has done.

But the thing which ought to reassure you somewhat as to the danger of
his calumny and his slander (for he employs both forms of backbiting) is
that at the very time when he believes he is making a burlesque autopsy
of me he is actually an obedient puppet whose wire I hold in my hands,
and whom I am making talk as I please. Being convinced that a certain
amount of noisy discussion would advance my political career, I
looked about me for what I may call a public crier. Among these
circus trumpets, if I could have found one with a sharper tone, a more
deafening blare than Bixiou's, I would have chosen it. As it was, I
have profited by the malevolent curiosity which induces that amiable
lepidopter to insinuate himself into all studios. I confided the whole
affair to him; even to the two hundred and fifty thousand francs (which
I attributed to a lucky stroke at the Bourse), I told him all my plans
of parliamentary conduct, down to the number of the house I have bought
to conform to the requirements of the electoral law. It is all jotted
down in his notebook.

That statement, I think, would somewhat reduce the admiration of
his hearers in the salon Montcornet did they know of it. As for the
political horoscope which he has been so kind as to draw for me, I
cannot honestly say that his astrology is at fault. It is very certain
that with my intention of following no set of fixed opinions, I must
reach the situation so admirably summed up by the lawyer of Monsieur de
la Palisse, when he exclaimed with burlesque emphasis: "What do you do,
gentlemen, when you place a man in solitude? You isolate him."

Isolation will certainly be my lot, and the artist-life, in which a man
lives alone and draws from himself like the Great Creator whose work
he toils to imitate, has predisposed me to welcome the situation.
But although, in the beginning especially, it will deprive me of all
influence in the lobbies, it may serve me well in the tribune, where I
shall be able to speak with strength and _freedom_. Being bound by no
promises and by no party trammels, nothing will prevent me from being
the man I am, and expressing, in all their sacred crudity, the ideas
which I think sound and just. I know very well that before an audience
plain, honest truth may fail to be contagious or even welcome. But have
you never remarked