Then the newly elected stands at a reading-desk and reads out the eulogy of his predecessor, which a committee has already been convened to consider, and when he terminates his “discourse,” his godfathers warmly shake his hand, and he sits down. The academician who receives him in the name of the august assembly replies, and reads his discourse sitting, placed between the chancellor and secretary, at the centre table, on a high daïs. When the speakers read their discourses as M. Brunetière reads his, it is a pleasure, whether you agree with them or not; but this is rare, for M. Brunetière was meant by nature to be a preacher or an actor. His elocution is magnificent, his voice arresting; whereas the average man is hard to follow and, in winter, is apt to have a cold in his head. After the ceremony, greetings during the exit, which is slow and precarious, and in the big courtyard proclaim you a fashionable person, and reveal to you the utter vanity of the whole affair. Then you understand why it is that women are supposed to be the pillars of the institution. There is something essentially wrong about fashionable women. They must, perforce, worship false gods. When they admire a writer, or a musician, or a dramatist, they are not happy until they see him in a false position. They must make a fool of him before they can consent to worship him. He administers to their vanity, and they administer to his. And so they go in a body to crown him; and not to be present at the crowning is a confession of social inferiority. Being more intelligent than the same class of women elsewhere, their folly takes this form of rendering interesting men ridiculous. If I thought them capable of humour and irony (which they are not), I might regard this as the supreme vengeance of their sex, excluded by national prejudice from all public honours. But, alas! no. They are in deadly earnest, and take their great men with rapture and gravity. They, at any rate, and the Immortals themselves, really believe in the Academy. They swallow each other, and piously give thanks for the meal. The fashionable woman hastens to invite the new Immortal to dinner for the exquisite satisfaction of giving him the place of honour and conferring distinction upon herself.