de Trinquelague would do on such or such an
occasion; M. Clausel de Montals differed on divers points from M.
Clausel de Coussergues; M. de Salaberry was not satisfied. The comedian
Picard, who belonged to the Academy, which the comedian Molière had not
been able to do, had _The Two Philiberts_ played at the Odéon, upon
whose pediment the removal of the letters still allowed THEATRE OF THE
EMPRESS to be plainly read. People took part for or against Cugnet de
Montarlot. Fabvier was factious; Bavoux was revolutionary. The Liberal,
Pélicier, published an edition of Voltaire, with the following title:
_Works of Voltaire_, of the French Academy. “That will attract
purchasers,” said the ingenious editor. The general opinion was that M.
Charles Loyson would be the genius of the century; envy was beginning
to gnaw at him—a sign of glory; and this verse was composed on him:—
“Even when Loyson steals, one feels that he has paws.”
As Cardinal Fesch refused to resign, M. de Pins, Archbishop of Amasie,
administered the diocese of Lyons. The quarrel over the valley of
Dappes was begun between Switzerland and France by a memoir from
Captain, afterwards General Dufour. Saint-Simon, ignored, was erecting
his sublime dream. There was a celebrated Fourier at the Academy of
Science, whom posterity has forgotten; and in some garret an obscure
Fourier, whom the future will recall. Lord Byron was beginning to make
his mark; a note to a poem by Millevoye introduced him to France in
these terms: _a certain Lord Baron_. David d’Angers was trying to work
in marble. The Abbé Caron was speaking, in terms of praise, to a
private gathering of seminarists in the blind alley of Feuillantines,
of an unknown priest, named Félicité-Robert, who, at a latter date,
became Lamennais. A thing which smoked and clattered on the Seine with
the noise of a swimming dog went and came beneath the windows of the
Tuileries, from the Pont Royal to the Pont Louis XV.; it was a piece of
mechanism which was not good for much; a sort of plaything, the idle
dream of a dream-ridden inventor; an utopia—a steamboat. The Parisians
stared indifferently at this useless thing. M. de Vaublanc, the
reformer of the Institute by a coup d’état, the distinguished author of
numerous academicians, ordinances, and batches of members, after having
created them, could not succeed in becoming one himself. The Faubourg
Saint-Germain and the pavilion de Marsan wished to have M. Delaveau for
prefect of police, on account of his piety. Dupuytren and Récamier
entered into a quarrel in the amphitheatre of the School of Medicine,
and threatened each other with their fists on the subject of the
divinity of Jesus Christ. Cuvier, with one eye on Genesis and the other
on nature, tried to please bigoted reaction by reconciling fossils with
texts and by making mastodons flatter Moses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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