he masterpiece was
hissed. Its title was "The End of the Comedy"; and a wretched witling
pretended that the piece was ill-named, since the pit refused to see the
end of the comedy. Thereupon Monsieur Taxile Delord adopted the method
of Gulliver's tailor, who measured for clothes according to the rules of
arithmetic: he demonstrated that his piece was played three times from
beginning to end,--that, as the manager was his particular friend, and
as the Odeon was always empty, he might have had it played thirty
times,--and therefore that we were all bound to be grateful to him for
his moderation. This last argument met no person bold enough to
contradict it, and the subscribers to "Le Charivari" (which is the
"Punch" of Paris) were seized with holy horror, when they thought, that,
but for Monsieur Taxile Delord's moderation, "The End of the Comedy"
might have been played seven-and-twenty times more.

What had I done to excite his ire? I had not treated Beranger with
sufficient respect, and Monsieur Taxile Delord, though a joker by trade,
would not hear of any fun on this subject. His genius had shaped itself
exactly on Beranger's, and he resented as a personal affront every
insult offered to the songster. Of a truth, Beranger's fate was a hard
one, and all my attacks on him were not half so bad as this treatment he
received at the hands of Monsieur Taxile Delord. Poor Beranger! So
Monsieur Taxile Delord took up the quarrel on his account, and relieved
his gall by throwing it on me. When I read his article, I felt
humiliated,--but not as the writer desired,--I felt humiliated for the
press, and for literature, and for Beranger, who really did not deserve
this hard fate. The humid office, full of dirt and dust and
printing-ink, disgusted and depressed me, and I involuntarily thought of
Count de ----'s drawing-room, and that aristocratic society where
everything was flowers, courtesy, perfumes, elegance, where people could
not even feel hatred towards their enemies, and where the genial poet,
Monsieur Ernest Legouve, surrounded by the most charming and most
sprightly women of Paris, recently obtained so delightful a triumph.

All at once a sympathetic and clear voice, a voice which I thought I had
heard in better society than where I was, reached my ears. Hid in the
dark corner where I sat, and where nobody could discover me, I saw the
door of the editor's room open and Monsieur Taxile Delord appear and
escort to the door a