But alas! as the weeks went on, Juliette herself suffered disappointment. The society in which she moved was utterly uncongenial. Her husband’s friends bored and revolted her; they talked of nothing but business; and her husband himself, when not discussing affairs, was for ever extolling the doctrines of Auguste Comte, whose positivism seemed to Juliette the negation of all her idealism. This disappointment, and the unhappiness of her home life, brought on an attack of neuralgia. She consulted the doctor of her _quartier_, a certain Dr. Bonnard, who had already corresponded with her father about a medical pamphlet, of which Dr. Lambert was the author. The doctor was quick to see that what Juliette needed was the physic of congenial society. He himself fortunately was in touch with literary people. He introduced her to two circles, one poetical, the other philosophical, where his young patient speedily felt herself at home. It was through Dr. Bonnard that the charming young Mme. Lamessine became a member of _L’Union des Poètes_. And it was a member of the Union, who, on a certain memorable day, took Juliette to see her first great Paris celebrity. This was the aged Béranger, a poet, whose name had been one of the household words of her childhood, whose songs exalting his adored Emperor her grandfather had known by heart. Never had Juliette seen “a simpler, more charming, more paternal, more kindly satirical old man.”[33] The poet had read some of his young visitor’s compositions. And the verdict he passed on them was frank and somewhat brutal. “My child,” he said, “you will never be a poet, but you may one day be a writer.” Juliette’s reception of this crushing dictum, while showing her sensitiveness to criticism, proves that her reason had not been warped by all the extravagant adulation she had received in childhood. For she bore the veteran poet no grudge for his disappointment of her hopes. But, from that day, she ceased to write poetry and withdrew from the Poet’s Union. As she was leaving, Béranger said to her, “Good-bye, my child. You will soon forgive me.” “Good-bye?” said Juliette, “why not _au revoir_? Don’t you like me? Don’t you wish ever to see me again?” Shrugging his shoulders and looking through the open windows, he said, “I think that I shall soon be going up there to see the _Dieu des bonnes gens_.” He died shortly afterwards at the age of seven-and-seventy, in July 1857.