journals once for all, I should be infinitely grateful to him and I would dash off on the spot a fine, rambling dithyramb, in soaring verse with alternate rhymes; signed: "Your most humble and loyal subject," etc. Pray do not imagine that there would be no further interest in literature; in the days when there were no newspapers, a quatrain engrossed all Paris for a week, and a first performance for six months. It is true that this step would result in the loss of advertisements and puffs at thirty sous a line, and notoriety would be less sudden and less overwhelming. But I have thought out a very ingenious way of replacing advertisements. If, between now and the day when this magnificent novel is placed on sale, my gracious sovereign shall have suppressed the newspapers, I shall most assuredly make use of it, and I anticipate wonders therefrom. When the great day arrives, twenty-four mounted criers, in the livery of Renduel, with his address on their backs and breasts, carrying banners in their hands with the title of the novel embroidered on both sides, each preceded by a drummer and kettle-drummer, will ride through the city, and, halting on all the squares and corners, will shout in a loud, distinct voice: "To-day, not yesterday or to-morrow, is placed on sale the admirable, the inimitable, the divine and more than divine novel by the most illustrious Théophile Gautier, _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, which Europe, not to mention other parts of the world and Polynesia, has been awaiting so impatiently for a year and more. It is selling at the rate of five hundred a minute, and editions follow one another from half-hour to half-hour; the nineteenth is already on sale. A detachment of municipal guards is stationed at the door of the shop, holding back the crowd and preventing all confusion." Surely that would be worth as much as three lines in the _Débats_ or the _Courrier Français_, between advertisements of elastic belts, hoop-skirts, nursing-bottles with indestructible teats, Regnault paste, and remedies for fluor albus. _May, 1834._ [Footnote 1: April fools--literally, April fishes.] [Footnote 2: New Bridge.] MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN I You complain, my dear friend, of the infrequency of my letters.--What would you have me write you except that I am well and that my affection for you never changes?--Those are facts that you know perfectly well, and that are so natural to my age and to the noble qualities that every one recognizes in you, that it is almost absurd to send a paltry sheet of paper a hundred leagues to say nothing more.--In vain do I cudgel my brains, I know of nothing that is worth the trouble of repeating; mine is the most monotonous life imaginable and nothing happens to break the monotony. To-day leads up to to-morrow as yesterday led up to to-day; and without claiming to be a prophet, I can boldly prophesy in the morning what will happen to me in the afternoon.