"That is not copy," he would say, and if he held me in any esteem, I owed it to my prose. All of the writers, young then, who associated themselves with the literary movement represented by Hugo, used, like the master, the lyre or the pen: Alfred de Vigny, Sainte-Beuve, Alfred de Musset, spoke interchangeably the language of the gods and the language of men. I too, if I am permitted to mention myself after such glorious names, have had since the beginning this double aptitude. It is always easy for poets to descend to prose. The bird may walk as needed, but the lion cannot fly. Those who are born to write prose never rise to poetry however poetic they may be elsewhere. Rhythmic speech is a particular gift, and one can possess it without being a great genius, while it is often refused to superior minds. Among the proudest who appear to disdain it, more than one keeps to himself a secret resentment to not possess it. Among the two thousand characters in La Comédie Humaine, one finds two poets: Canalis, of Modeste Mignon, and Lucien de Rubempré, of Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes. Balzac portrayed both of them as having traits that were not particularly favorable. Canalis is dry, cold, sterile, petty, an adroit arranger of words, a maker of imitation jewelry, who sets rhinestones in gilded silver, and makes necklaces of artificial pearls. His volumes, with many blank spaces, wide margins, and large gaps, contain only a melodious nothingness, monotonous music, suitable only to cause young boarders to fall asleep or dream. Balzac, who ordinarily shapes with warmth the interests of his characters, seems to take a secret pleasure in ridiculing this one and putting him in embarrassing positions: he challenges his vanity with a thousand ironies and a thousand sarcasms, and finishes by taking from him Modeste Mignon with her great fortune, to give her to Ernest de la Brière. This conclusion, in contrast to the beginning of the story, sparkles with concealed malice and fine mockery. One would say that Balzac is personally happy at the good trick that he has played on Canalis. He avenges, in his own way, the angels, the sylphs, the lakes, the swans, the willows, the skiffs, the stars and the lyres that had been used so abundantly by the poet.