s que moi_" could not escape being vigorously lashed
by V. Hugo's old comrades of the quill, dating back with him to 1830,
and now so loftily ignored. "See, even in his epistles of condolence,"
they cry, "the omnipresent _moi_ of Hugo must appear, to overshadow
everything else!" One indignant writer declares the poet to be a mere
walking personal pronoun. Another humorously pities those still extant
contemporaries of 1830 who, after having for forty years dedicated
their songs and romances and dramas to Hugo, now learn from the
selfsame maw which has greedily gulped their praises that they
themselves do not exist, never did exist. One man of genius
slyly writes: "Some of us veterans will find ourselves
embarrassed--Michelet, G. Sand, Janin, Sandeau _et un pen moi_. Is it
possible that we died a long time ago, one after the other, without
knowing it? Was it a delusion on our part to fancy ourselves existing,
or was our existence only a bad dream?" But to Victor Hugo even these
complaints will perhaps seem to smoke like fresh incense on the altar
of self-adulation which this great genius keeps ever lighted.

The reader may remember the story of that non-committal editor who
during the late canvass, desiring to propitiate all his subscribers of
both parties, hoisted the ticket of "Gr---- and ----n" at the top
of his column, thus giving those who took the paper their choice of
interpretations between "Grant and Wilson" and "Greeley and Brown."
A story turning on the same style of point (and probably quite as
apocryphal, though the author labels it "_historique_") is told of an
army officers' mess in France. A brother-soldier from a neighboring
detachment having come in, and a _champenoise_ having been uncorked in
his honor, "Gentlemen," said the guest, raising his glass, "I am about
to propose a toast at once patriotic and political." A chorus of hasty
ejaculations and of murmurs at once greeted him. "Yes, gentlemen,"
coolly proceeded the orator, "I drink to a thing which--an object
that--Bah! I will out with it at once. It begins with an _R_ and ends
with an _e_."

"Capital!" whispers a young lieutenant of Bordeaux promotion. "He
proposes the _Republique_, without offending the old fogies by saying
the word."

"Nonsense! He means the _Radicale_," replies the other, an old captain
from Cassel.

"Upon my word," says a third as he lifts his glass, "our friend must
mean _la Royaute_."

"I see!" cries a one-legged vetera