poetry under the Empire, and yet they tell us
it was a period that neglected literature! Examine the "Journal de
la Libraire" and you will find poems on the game of draughts, on
backgammon, on tricks with cards, on geography, typography, comedy,
etc.,--not to mention the vaunted masterpieces of Delille on Piety,
Imagination, Conversation; and those of Berchoux on Gastromania and
Dansomania, etc. Who can foresee the chances and changes of taste,
the caprices of fashion, the transformations of the human mind? The
generations as they pass along sweep out of sight the last fragments
of the idols they found on their path and set up other gods,--to be
overthrown like the rest.

Sarcus, a handsome little man with a dapple-gray head, devoted himself
in turn to Themis and to Flora,--in other words, to legislation and a
greenhouse. For the last twelve years he had been meditating a book
on the History of the Institution of Justices of the Peace, "whose
political and judiciary role," he said, "had already passed through
several phases, all derived from the Code of Brumaire, year IV.; and
to-day that institution, so precious to the nation, had lost its power
because the salaries were not in keeping with the importance of its
functions, which ought to be performed by irremovable officials." Rated
in the community as an able man, Sarcus was the accepted statesman of
Madame Soudry's salon; you can readily imagine that he was the leading
bore. They said he talked like a book. Gaubertin prophesied he would
receive the cross of the Legion of honor, but not until the day when, as
Leclercq's successor, he should take his seat on the benches of the Left
Centre.

Guerbet, the collector, a man of parts, a heavy, fat, individual with
a buttery face, a toupet on his bald spot, gold earrings, which were
always in difficulty with his shirt-collar, had the hobby of pomology.
Proud of possessing the finest fruit-garden in the arrondissement, he
gathered his first crops a month later than those of Paris; his hot-beds
supplied him with pine-apples, nectarines, and peas, out of season. He
brought bunches of strawberries to Madame Soudry with pride when the
fruit could be bought for ten sous a basket in Paris.

Soulanges possessed a pharmaceutist named Vermut, a chemist, who was
more of a chemist than Sarcus was a statesman, or Lupin a singer, or
Gourdon the elder a scientist, or his brother a poet. Nevertheless, the
leading society of Soulanges di