"His enemies pretended that you had but to mention Michelet, Balzac, and Victor Hugo to see Sainte-Beuve in three degrees of rage. He had, it is true, distinct expressions on hearing those authors discussed. The phrase then much used in speaking of an original personality, `He is like a character out of Balzac,' always threw my master into a temper. I cannot remember, however, having seen him in one of those famous rages which made Barbey d'Aurevilly say that `Sainte-Beuve was a clever man with the temper of a turkey!' The former was much nearer the truth when he called the author of LES LUNDIS a French Wordsworth, or compared him to a lay BENEDICTIN. He had a way of reading a newly acquired volume as he walked through the streets that was typical of his life.
My master was always studying and always advancing.
"He never entirely recovered from his mortification at being hissed by the students on the occasion of his first lecture at the College de France. Returning home he loaded two pistols, one for the first student who should again insult him, and the other to blow out his own brains. It was no idle threat. The man Guizot had nicknamed `Werther' was capable of executing his plan, for this causeless unpopularity was anguish to him.
After his death, I found those two pistols loaded in his bedroom, but justice had been done another way. All opposition had vanished. Every student in the `Quarter' followed the modest funeral of their Senator, who had become the champion of literary liberty in an epoch when poetry was held in chains.
"The Empire which made him Senator gained, however, but an indocile recruit. On his one visit to Compiegne in 1863, the Emperor, wishing to be particularly gracious, said to him, `I always read the MONITEUR on Monday, when your article appears.' Unfortunately for this compliment, it was the CONSTITUTIONNEL that had been publishing the NOUVEAUX LUNDIS for more than four years. In spite of the united efforts of his friends, Sainte-Beuve could not be brought to the point of complimenting Napoleon III. on his LIFE OF CAESAR.
The author of LES CONSOLATIONS remained through life the proudest and most independent of men, a bourgeois, enemy of all tyranny, asking protection of no one. And what a worker!
Reading, sifting, studying, analyzing his subject before composing one of his famous LUNDIS, a literary portrait which he aimed at making complete and final. One of these articles cost him as much labor as other authors give to the composition of a volume.
"By way of amusement on Sunday evenings, when work was temporarily laid aside, he loved the theatre, delighting in every kind of play, from the broad farces of the Palais Royal to the tragedies of Racine, and entertaining comedians in order, as he said, `to keep young'! One evening Theophile Gautier brought a pretty actress to dinner. Sainte-Beuve, who was past-master in the difficult art of conversation, and on whom a fair woman acted as an inspiration, surpassed himself on this occasion, surprising even the Goncourts with his knowledge of the Eighteenth century and the women of that time, Mme. de Boufflers, Mlle. de Lespinasse, la Marechale de Luxembourg. The hours flew by unheeded by all of his guests but one. The DEBUTANTE was overheard confiding, later in the evening, to a friend at the Gymnase, where she performed in the last act, `Ouf! I'm glad to get here. I`ve been dining with a stupid old Senator. They told me he would be amusing, but I've been bored to death.' Which reminded me of my one visit to England, when I heard a young nobleman declare that he had been to `such a dull dinner to meet a duffer called "Renan!" '
"Sainte-Beuve's LARMES DE RACINE was given at the Theatre Francais during its author's last illness. His disappointment at not seeing the performance was so keen that M. Thierry, then ADMINISTRATEUR of La Comedie, took Mlle. Favart to the rue Montparnasse, that she might recite his verses to the dying writer. When the actress, then in the zenith of her fame and beauty, came to the lines-Jean Racine, le grand poete, Le poete aimant et pieux, Apres que sa lyre muette Se fut voilee a tous les yeux, Renoncant a la gloire humaine, S'il sentait en son ame pleine Le flot contenu murmurer, Ne savait que fondre en priere, Pencher l'urne dans la poussiere Aux pieds du Seigneur, et pleurer! the tears of Sainte-Beuve accompanied those of Racine!"
There were tears also in the eyes my companion turned toward me as he concluded. The sun had set while he had been speaking. The marble of the statues gleamed white against the shadows of the sombre old garden. The guardians were closing the gates and warning the lingering visitors as we strolled toward the entrance.
It seemed as if we had been for an hour in the presence of the portly critic; and the circle of brilliant men and witty women who surrounded him - Flaubert, Tourgueneff, Theophile Gautier, Renan, George Sand - were realities at that moment, not abstractions with great names. It was like returning from another age, to step out again into the glare and bustle of the Boulevard St. Michel.
