ef, he refused the novel, unless it was modified to a
great extent and its blood-curdling episodes softened. The author,
taking himself _au serieux_ this time as a religious reformer, declined
to alter a line. Dr. Veron got wind of the affair, bought the novel as
it stood, and, by dint of a system of puffing and advertising which
would even make a modern American stare, obtained a success with it in
the _Constitutionnel_ which equalled if it did not surpass that of the
_Debats_ with the "Mysteres."

"It is very amusing indeed," said George Sand one night, "but there are
too many animals. I hope we shall soon get out of this menagerie."
Nevertheless, she frankly admitted that she would not like to miss an
instalment for ever so much.

Meanwhile Sue posed and posed, not as a writer--for, like Horace
Walpole, he was almost ashamed of the title--but as "a man of the world"
who knew nothing about literature, but whose wish to benefit humanity
had been greater than his reluctance to enter the lists with such men as
Balzac and Dumas. After his dinner at the Cafe de Paris, he would
gravely stand on the steps smoking his cigar and listen to the
conversation with an air of superiority without attempting to take part
in it. His mind was supposed to be far away, devising schemes for the
social and moral improvement of his fellow-creatures. These
philanthropic musings did not prevent him from paying a great deal of
attention--too much perhaps--to his personal appearance, for even in
those days of beaux, bucks, and dandies, of Counts d'Orsay and others,
men could not help thinking Eugene Sue overdressed. He rarely appeared
without spurs to his boots, and he would no more have done without a new
pair of white kid gloves every evening than without his dinner. Other
men, like Nestor de Roqueplan, Alfred de Musset, Major Fraser, all of
whose names will frequently recur in these notes, did not mind having
their gloves cleaned, though the process was not so perfect as it is
now; Eugene Sue averred that the smell of cleaned gloves made him ill.
Alfred de Musset, who could be very impertinent when he liked, but who
was withal a very good fellow, said one day: "Mais enfin, mon ami, ca ne
sent pas pire que les bouges que vous nous depeignez. N'y seriez vous
jamais alle?"

In short, several years before the period of which I now treat, Eugene
Sue had begun to be looked upon coldly at the Jockey Club on account of
the "airs he gave himself;"