But it was one thing to whistle to Balzac, and quite another for him to come at the call. His character was not an agreeable one; he was excessively proud, painfully shy, quivering with self-consciousness, ever ready to take offence. Tallemant des Réaux, putting the universal opinion into an epigram, said that if ever there was an _animal gloriæ_ it was Balzac. He was a finished hypochondriac, with his finger ever on his own pulse; before he was thirty he described himself as more battered than a ship that has sailed three times to the Indies. He was a hermit, hating society, and scarcely ever leaving that garden of amber and musk within the walls of his castle of Balzac which hung above the mingling waters of the Charente and the Touvre. But Balzac, whose character and temperament had many points of likeness to those of Pope, knew the value of friendship, though he was capable of amazing disloyalty under the pressure of vanity. Conrart, Boisrobert, Chapelain, and even perhaps the magnificent Cardinal himself--for there is talk of a pension--brought simultaneous pressure to bear, and Balzac consented to let his name appear in the list of original members of the Académie. This did not induce in him much zeal for the works or deeds of his nominal colleagues, upon whom, from his far-away garden-terraces, he looked down with great contempt. Still, the Académie Française was in existence, for Balzac was of the number. Among the other original members, Voiture and Gomberville, the author of _Polexandre_, have never lost their little place in the crowded history of French literature. Saint-Amant and Maynard, who sank out of sight for a long time, are now regarded with more honour than ever before since their death. Honorat de Beuil, Marquis de Racan, is one of the minor classics of his country. A dreamy, blundering man, innocent and vague, his whole outlook upon life was that of a pastoral poet. He had "no common sense," we are told, but walked in a cloud conducting an imaginary flock and murmuring his beautiful Virgilian verses. Racan took the Academy more seriously than any other member; he never missed a sitting. But he could not be depended on. Once, the Academy met to listen to an address by the Marquis de Racan, who entered, holding one torn sheet of paper in his hand. "Gentlemen," he said, "I was bringing you my oration, but my great greyhound has chewed it up. Here it is! Make what you can of it, for I don't know it by heart, and I have no copy." The story of how old Mlle. de Gournay was gulled by successive impostors who pretended to be Racan, and then at length spurned the real poet, as an obvious idiot, is too long to be told here in detail. At the close of his life, Racan had allowed himself to retain no friends except his fellow academicians, so completely had he become absorbed in the Académie.