o do with this military person--who
served under the lilies at the siege of Gibraltar that ended so badly
in the year 1783, and who did a great deal of very pretty fighting later
under the tri-colour--I am sure I do not know! Then on we went, to the
quick tap of the drums, the Mayor and the glittering firemen preceding
us, to the laying of a corner-stone that really was in our line: that of
a monument to the memory of the dramatist Emile Augier. Here, naturally,
M. Jules Claretie came to the fore. In the parlance of the Academy,
Augier was "his dead man"; and not often does it happen that a finer, a
more discriminating, eulogy is pronounced in the Academy by the
successor to a vacant chair than was pronounced that hot day in Valence
upon Emile Augier by the Director of the Comedie Francaise. When it was
ended, there was added to the contents of the leaden casket a final
paper bearing the autographs of the notables of our company; and then
the cap-stone, swinging from tackles, was lowered away.

We had the same ceremony over again, ten minutes later, when we laid the
corner-stone of the monument to the Comte de Montalivet: who was an
eminent citizen and Mayor of Valence, and later was a Minister under
the first Napoleon--whom he had met at Madame Colombier's, likely
enough, in the days when the young artillery officer was doing fitful
garrison-duty in that little town. Again it seemed to me that we poets
were not necessarily very closely associated with the matter in hand;
but we cheered at the proper places, and made appropriate and
well-turned speeches, and contributed a valuable collection of
autographs to the lead box in the corner-stone: and did it all with the
easily off-hand air of thorough poets of the world. In the matter of the
autographs there was near to being a catastrophe. Everything was going
at a quick-step--our time being so short--and in the hurry of it all the
lead box was closed and the cap-stone was lowered down upon it while yet
the autographs remained outside! It was by the merest chance, I fancy,
in that bustling confusion, that the mistake happened to be noticed; and
I cannot but think--the autographs, with only a few exceptions, being
quite illegible--that no great harm would have come had it passed
unobserved. However, the omission being discovered, common courtesy to
the autographists required that the cap-stone should be raised again and
the much-signed paper put where it belonged.

Having t