s its _Attaches_. The
_Attaches_ of the Republican party are watched very closely. One day
two Republicans meet, and the first says to the second: "You have sold
yourself; people find you are getting fatter." Whence it follows that
any paper knowing its trade will have only exceedingly thin
_Attaches_; otherwise your _Attache_ will be a mere detached
_Attache_, that is to say, a sort of paid spy, who is mostly a
professor of rhetoric or philosophy. He will dine at all tables, with
mission to attack political leaders; he runs in and out of newspaper
offices, like a dog seeking his master; and, when he has bitten
sharply, he becomes the professor of a fantastic science, the private
secretary of some cabinet, or else consul-general.

Afterwards come the _gendelettre_ pamphleteers. According to the
author of the _Monography_, the pamphlet is the brochure masterpiece;
and he himself is its most illustrious exponent. The Abbe de Lamennais
does not know how to speak to the proletariat. He is not Spartacus
enough, not Marat enough, not Calvin enough; he does not understand
how to storm the positions of the ignoble bourgeoisie at present in
power.

Following on are the _gendelettre-vulgarisateurs_, who have invented
Germany. The type of this class is appointed professor in the College
de France. He marches at the head of the Nothingologues; he is the
almighty king of the Sorbonne. Such people are the skin parasites of
France. The Nothingologue is ordinarily _monobible_;[*] and, as the
bourgeoisie are essentially lacking in intelligence, they are
infatuated with him. The _Monobible_ becomes a director of canals,
railways, the defender of negroes, or else the advocate of slavery; in
a word, the Nothingologue is an important man, quite as the convinced
_gendelettre_, who reserves to himself the Council of State, and as
the sceptic _gendelettre_, who becomes Master of Requests or Governor
of the Marquisas Isles.

[*] In Balzac's use of the word: A man who has written only one book
and boasts of it always.

Replying to this diatribe, with its medley of shrewdness and
exaggeration, Janin pointed out that it insulted Quinet, professor at
the College de France; Sainte-Beuve, the poet, novelist, and critic,
the historian of Port-Royal; Philarete Chasles, professor of Foreign
Literature; Loeve Weimars, Consul at Bagdad; not to speak of Planche,
Berlioz, Michel and Chevalier; and that it came amiss from a man who
had lived an