f the Luxembourg, at the foot of the statue of Marguerite de
Navarre. It is a spring sun, intoxicating as young wine. I sit and
dream. My thoughts escape from my head like the foam from a bottle of
beer. They are light, and their fizzing amuses me. I dream; such a
pastime is certainly permissible to an old fellow who has published
thirty volumes of texts, and contributed to the Journal des Savants
for twenty-six years. I have the satisfaction of feeling that I
performed my task as well as it was possible for me, and that I
utilized to their fullest extent those mediocre faculties with which
nature endowed me. My efforts were not all in vain, and I have
contributed, in my own modest way, to that renaissance of historical
labors which will remain the honor of this restless century. I shall
certainly be counted among those ten or twelve who revealed to France
her own literary antiquities. My publication of the poetical works of
Gautier de Coincy inaugurated a judicious system and made a date. It
is in the austere calm of old age that I decree to myself this
deserved credit, and God, who sees my heart, knows whether pride or
vanity have aught to do with this self-award of justice.

But I am tired; my eyes are dim; my hand trembles, and I see an image
of myself in those old men of Homer, whose weakness excluded them from
the battle, and who, seated upon the ramparts, lifted up their voices
like crickets among the leaves.

So my thoughts were wandering, when three young men seated themselves
near me. I do not know whether each one of them had come in three
boats, like the monkey of La Fontaine, but the three certainly
displayed themselves over the space of twelve chairs. I took pleasure
in watching them, not because they had anything very extraordinary
about them, but because I discerned in them that brave joyous manner
which is natural to youth. They were from the schools. I was less
assured of it by the books they were carrying than by the character of
their physiognomy. For all who busy themselves with the things of the
mind can be at once recognized by an indescribable something which is
common to all of them. I am very fond of young people; and these
pleased me, in spite of a certain provoking wild manner which recalled
to me my own college days with marvelous vividness. But they did not
wear velvet doublets and long hair, as we used to do; they did not
walk about, as we used to do, with a death's-head; they did not cry