ave Man,' and discussing Shelley with a boyish
magazine writer, neat and solemn, with a pointed chin resting on the top
of a high collar.

When I was young it was the fashion to begin with verse-writing,
whatever was to follow, whether prose, business, or the bar. Nowadays
people begin with literary criticism, generally a study on Shelley.
Madame Astier introduced me to this young gentleman, whose views carry
weight in the literary world; but my moustaches and the colour of my
skin, as brown as that of a sapper-and-miner, probably failed to please
him. We spoke only a few words, while I watched the performance of the
candidates and their wives or relatives, who had come to show themselves
and to see how the ground lay. Ripault-Babin is very old, and Loisillon
cannot last much longer; and around these seats, which must soon be
vacant, rages a war of angry looks and poisoned words.

Dalzon the novelist, your favourite, was there; he has a kindly, open,
intellectual face, as you would expect from his books. But you would
have been sorry to see him cringing and sniggering before a nobody like
Bretigny, who has never done anything, but occupies in the Academic
the seat reserved for the man of the world, as in the country we keep
a place for the poor man in our Twelfth Night festivities. And not only
did he court Bretigny, but every Academician who came in. There he was,
listening to old Rehu's stories, laughing at Danjou's smallest jokes
with the 'counterfeited glee' with which at Louis-le-Grand we rewarded
what Vedrine used to call 'usher's wit.' All this to bring his twelve
votes of last year up to the required majority.

Old Jean Rehu looked in at his granddaughter's for a few minutes,
wonderfully fresh and erect, well buttoned up in a long frock coat. He
has a little shrivelled face, looking as if it had been in the fire, and
a short cottony beard, like moss on an old stone. His eyes are bright
and his memory marvellous, but he is deaf, and this depresses him
and drives him into long soliloquies about his interesting personal
recollections, To-day he told us about the household of the Empress
Josephine at Malmaison; his 'compatriote,' he calls her, both being
Creoles from Martinique. He described her, in her muslins and cashmere
shawls, smelling of musk so strongly as to take one's breath away,
and surrounded with flowers from the colonies. Even in war time these
flowers, by the gallantry of the enemy, were allowed to