The vanity of Victor Hugo, though always "Olympian," perhaps never mounted to a sublimer height than in the reply he sent to M. Catulle Mendes on receiving from him the news of Gautier's death. It contained but half a dozen lines, yet found space to declare, "Of the men of 1830, _I alone am left_. It is now my turn." The profound egotism of "_il ne reste plus que moi_" could not escape being vigorously lashed by V. Hugo's old comrades of the quill, dating back with him to 1830, and now so loftily ignored. "See, even in his epistles of condolence," they cry, "the omnipresent _moi_ of Hugo must appear, to overshadow everything else!" One indignant writer declares the poet to be a mere walking personal pronoun. Another humorously pities those still extant contemporaries of 1830 who, after having for forty years dedicated their songs and romances and dramas to Hugo, now learn from the selfsame maw which has greedily gulped their praises that they themselves do not exist, never did exist. One man of genius slyly writes: "Some of us veterans will find ourselves embarrassed--Michelet, G. Sand, Janin, Sandeau _et un pen moi_. Is it possible that we died a long time ago, one after the other, without knowing it? Was it a delusion on our part to fancy ourselves existing, or was our existence only a bad dream?" But to Victor Hugo even these complaints will perhaps seem to smoke like fresh incense on the altar of self-adulation which this great genius keeps ever lighted. The reader may remember the story of that non-committal editor who during the late canvass, desiring to propitiate all his subscribers of both parties, hoisted the ticket of "Gr---- and ----n" at the top of his column, thus giving those who took the paper their choice of interpretations between "Grant and Wilson" and "Greeley and Brown." A story turning on the same style of point (and probably quite as apocryphal, though the author labels it "_historique_") is told of an army officers' mess in France. A brother-soldier from a neighboring detachment having come in, and a _champenoise_ having been uncorked in his honor, "Gentlemen," said the guest, raising his glass, "I am about to propose a toast at once patriotic and political." A chorus of hasty ejaculations and of murmurs at once greeted him. "Yes, gentlemen," coolly proceeded the orator, "I drink to a thing which--an object that--Bah! I will out with it at once. It begins with an _R_ and ends with an _e_." "Capital!" whispers a young lieutenant of Bordeaux promotion. "He proposes the _Republique_, without offending the old fogies by saying the word." "Nonsense! He means the _Radicale_," replies the other, an old captain from Cassel. "Upon my word," says a third as he lifts his glass, "our friend must mean _la Royaute_." "I see!" cries a one-legged veteran of Froschweiler: "we drink to _la Revanche_." In fact, the whole party drank the toast heartily, each interpreting it to his liking.