y works, which I submit
to your able and kind criticism."

Nor were appeals like these the only sort of seduction to which I was
exposed when I became the literary critic of "L'Assemblee Nationale."
The eminent men, sublime philosophers like Monsieur Victor Cousin and
Monsieur de Remusat, incomparable historians like Monsieur Guizot,
Monsieur Thiers, Monsieur de Barante, admirable literary men like
Monsieur Villemain and Monsieur de Salvandy, (all of whom had spent
their lives in laying down political maxims, and in expressing their
astonishment that French heads were too hard or French nature too fickle
to conform French life to the profound maxims which they, the former,
had weighed and meditated in the silence of their study,) who had for
eighteen years ruled France, found themselves, one February morning in
1848, stripped of power and of place. They returned to their favorite
studies, and produced new works, to the delight of lettered men
everywhere. But, as the human heart, even in the beat of men, has its
weaknesses, these eminent men, who could not for a single instant doubt
either their talents or their success or the universal admiration in
which they were held, were a little too fond of hearing these agreeable
truths told them in articles devoted especially to their works. Now to
heighten the zeal of the authors of these articles, the eminent retired
statesmen held in their hands an infallible method: They would take
these trumpeters of fame aside, and, without contracting any positive
engagement, would distinctly hint to these critics, (a word to the wise
is sufficient!) that, after a few years of these excellent and useful
services in the daily press or in the periodicals, they, the former,
would elect the latter members of the French Academy. A seat in the
French Academy was the object of the most ardent ambition. No sooner was
the breath out of the body of one of the forty members of the French
Academy than twenty candidates entered the lists, and canvassed,
canvassed, canvassed the nine-and-thirty living Academicians, without
losing a minute in eating, drinking, or sleeping, until the election
took place.

You may now see the various sorts of seductions which assailed me during
this short and brilliant period of my literary life. The world lay
smiling before me, and I felt quite happy,--when I met Monsieur Louis
Veuillot, the eminent editor of "L'Univers," which the government has
since suppressed.