The reader must not complain that he has been entrapped into reading a leader on French politics when he desired nothing of the sort; for, without bearing in mind these preliminary facts, it is quite impossible to understand the relations of French literary men among themselves. Party passion has ever run high in France, and now that everybody can freely speak his mind, it has become more difficult than ever for even the oldest friendship to stand the strain of daily discussion. Take the instance of M. About and M. Taine. They were schoolboys together, and it would be hard to say which of the two most distinguished himself at this period of his career. They were both prodigies, but, though rivals, the fastest friends. After they had emerged from the Ecole Normale they went and set up housekeeping together in an old house in the Quartier Latin; and as they were both poor as rats, the difficulties they had in keeping soul and body together recall the most picturesque and thrilling scenes in Murger's _Vie de Boheme_. One day they discovered that they had neither money nor anything to eat, and About started out to scare up some nutriment for the inner man. After a while he returned laden with a basket containing a dozen bottles of wine and various packets of provisions, and followed by an organ-grinder. Taine was of course no less pleased than astonished, but he demanded an explanation. "Oh," said About, "I stumbled across a wine-dealer who wanted a first-class advertisement done in the highest style of art, so I sat down and wrote it for him, and he gave me fifty francs and this wine."--"But the organ-grinder?" pursued Taine.--"Heavens!" exclaimed his friend, "you don't think one can enjoy a banquet without music, do you? Come, fall to; and you, old buffer, go to work on that divine instrument of yours;" which the old buffer proceeded to do, probably more to the satisfaction of his employer than to that of Taine.