onstrued--gradually arrayed against her
nearly the entire force of the press.

They who had been her most devoted admirers, now displayed all their
zeal in the discovery of her faults. The very excellences they had once
extolled, they now censured as stage trickery and deceit. One by one,
they despoiled her of every qualification for art, save her beauty; and
even that, they said, already proclaimed its perishable nature. My heart
sickens as I think over the refined cruelty of these daily attacks,--the
minute and careful anatomy of humanity studied to inflict misery! To
stem this torrent of opinion, I devoted myself alone. Giving up all
other writing, I thought only of Margot and her cause. I assailed
her critics with the foulest abuse. I aspersed their motives, and not
unfrequently their lives. I eagerly sought out circumstances of their
private habits and actions, and proclaimed them to the world as the men
who dared to teach the expressions by which virtues should be rendered,
and of whose very existence they were ignorant. I contrasted their means
of judgment with their daily lives. I exhibited them as mere hirelings,
the cowardly bravos of a degenerate age; and, of course,--for Paris was
always the same in this respect,--various duels were fastened on me for
my insolence.

My skill at the sword exercise carried me safely through many of these
encounters. My recklessness of life may perhaps have served to preserve
it, for I was utterly reckless of it! My neglect of politics, and all
interest about them, procured my dismissal from the Government journal.
The "Vendee" soon followed the example; and although the violence of
my articles in the "Avant Scene" had for a time amused the town, the
editors told me that my defence of Mademoiselle Margot had now been
carried far enough, and that I should look elsewhere for a new topic.

Not a few of Margot's warmest admirers condemned the ill-advised zeal
of my advocacy. Some even affirmed that much of her unpopularity had its
origin in my indiscreet defence. I was coldly told I had "written too
much." One said I had "fought too often." The fastidious public--which
acknowledged no sincerity, nor would recognize such a thing as
truth--condemned, as bad taste, the excesses into which my heartfelt
indignation had hurried me. Mademoiselle Mars was a half convert to this
opinion; I shuddered one day as I suspected that even Margot seemed to
entertain it. I had been pressing her to