shed by
enrolling among their ranks most of the literary men of the day. This
alienation was to a great extent caused by his inveterate habit of
boasting, of applying the adjectives "sublime" and "magnificent" to
his own works: an idiosyncracy which was naturally annoying to his
brother authors. It was deprecated even by his devoted and admiring
friends; though they knew that, as George Sand says, it was only
caused by the _naivete_ of an artist, to whom his work was
all-important.

His personal charm was so great, that Werdet, his enemy, says that in
his presence those who loved him, forgot any real or fancied complaint
against him, and only remembered the affection they felt for him.
Nevertheless, in the course of his life of fighting, his ever-pressing
anxieties and the strain of his work, coupled with his belief in the
importance and sacredness of his destiny, made him something of an
egotist. Therefore, in spite of his real goodness of heart, he would
sometimes shoulder his way through the world, oblivious of the
unfortunate people who had come to grief owing to their connection
with him, and careless of the lesser, though very real troubles of
harassed and exasperated editors, when his promised copy was not
forthcoming.

Like Napoleon, to whom, amidst the gibes of his contemporaries, he
likened himself, he wanted everything; and those with this aspiration
must necessarily be heedless of their neighbours' smaller ambitions.
"Without genius, I am undone!" he cried in despair; but when it was
proved beyond dispute that this gift of debatable beneficence was his,
he was still unsatisfied.

What, after all, was the use of genius except as a stepping-stone to
the solid good things of the earth? Where lay the advantage of
superiority to ordinary men, if it could not be employed as a lever
with which to raise oneself? Reasoning thus, his extraordinary
versatility, his power of assimilation, and his varied interests, made
his ambitions many and diverse. The man who could enter with the
masterly familiarity of an expert into affairs of Church, State,
Society, and Finance, who would talk of medicine like a doctor, or of
science like a savant, naturally aspired to excellence in many
directions.

At times, as we have already seen, strange fancies filled his brain:
dreams, for instance, of occupying the highest posts in the land, or
of gaining fabulous sums of money by some wildly impossible scheme,
such as visiting the