t be admitted that Cardinal de Retz, like a later French prelate,
Talleyrand, made no pretense of being fitted for the Church.
Talleyrand's only qualification was that he was lame; and, as a younger
son, he had to be provided for. But Cardinal de Retz, with all his
faults, had a saving grace in spite of many unsaving graces. He did his
best to escape the priesthood. He fought his first duel with
Bassompierre behind the Convent of the Minims, in the Bois de
Vincennes; but it was of no use. His friends stopped the inquiry of the
Attorney General, "and so I remained in my cassock notwithstanding my
duel." His next duel was with Praslin. He tried his best to give it the
utmost publicity, but, he says, "there's no use in opposing one's
destiny; nobody took the slightest notice of the scandal."

The elder Dumas has probably had his day, though "Monte Cristo" and "The
Three Musketeers" are still read. The newer romance writers are less
diffuse, and, not writing _feuilletons_, are not forced to be diffuse.
The constant reader of French memoirs of the seventeenth century can
hardly help wondering why anybody should read Dumas who could go
directly to the sources of his romances.

Speaking of the relation of books to books, it was the "Memoirs" of
Madame Campan that took me into the society of Benjamin Franklin. There
were legends about him in Philadelphia, where we thought we knew more
about this distinguished American than anybody else; but it was through
certain passages in the "Memoirs on Marie Antoinette and her Court" that
I turned to his autobiography, and then to such letters of his as could
be found. That autobiography is one of the gems of American history,
though it does not reveal the whole man. If he had been as frank as
Cardinal de Retz, his autobiography would have been suppressed; but,
then, no Philadelphian could ever be quite frank in his memoirs. It has
never been done! Even the seemingly reckless James Huneker understood
that thoroughly. But the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is
sufficiently frank. It is of its own time, and it seems to me that it
should be read just after one has finished for the second or third time
the memoirs of Gouverneur Morris. Everybody feels it his duty to acclaim
the charm of the confessions of Benvenuto Cellini, and I have known a
young woman who read them reverently in the holy service of culture as a
pendant to a textbook on the Renascence, and followed him by Jowett's
transl