he parliamentary
future of a man of whom, you said to me the other day, you felt
you could not safely make a friend, because of the lofty and rather
impertinent assumption of his personality. To tell the truth, madame,
whatever political success may be in store for Charles de Sallenauve,
I fear he may one day regret the calmer fame of which he was already
assured in the world of art. But neither he nor I was born under an
easy and accommodating star. Birth has been a costly thing to us; it is
therefore doubly cruel not to like us. You have been kind to me because
you fancy that a lingering fragrance of our dear Louise still clings to
me; give something, I beseech you, of the same kindness to him whom I
have not hesitated in this letter to call our friend.

XV. MARIE-GASTON TO THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE

Arcis-sur-Aube, May 13, 1839.

Madame,--I see that the electoral fever is upon you, as you are good
enough to send me from Monsieur de l'Estorade so many _discouragements_
which certainly deserve consideration.

We knew already of the mission given to Comte Maxime de Trailles,--a
mission he endeavored at first to conceal under some irrigating project.
We even know what you, madame, seem not to know,--that this able
ministerial agent has found means to combine with the cares of electoral
politics those of his own private policy. Monsieur Maxime de Trailles,
if we are rightly informed, was on the point of succumbing to the
chronic malady with which he has been so long afflicted; I mean _debt_.
Not debts, for we say "the debt of Monsieur de Trailles," as we say
"the debt of England." In this extremity the patient, resolved on
heroic remedies, adopted that of marriage, which might perhaps be called
marriage _in extremis_.

To cut a long story short, Monsieur de Trailles was sent to Arcis to
put an end to the candidacy of an upstart of the Left centre, a certain
Simon Giguet; and having brought forward the mayor of the town as
the ministerial candidate, he finds the said mayor, named Beauvisage,
possessed of an only daughter, rather pretty, and able to bring
her husband five hundred thousand francs amassed in the honorable
manufacture of cotton night-caps. Now you see, I am sure, the mechanism
of the affair.

As for our own claims, we certainly do not make cotton night-caps, but
we make statues,--statues for which we are decorated with the Legion of
honor; religious statues, inaugurated with great pomp by Monseig