assented, laughing; but he remained very grave, plainly touched, and even declared that he would not have persevered with his book if I had insisted on using the name. He looked upon his work as being entirely in those two names Bouvard and Pécuchet, and could not picture it without them."[9] Now Flaubert was one of the best-hearted men in the world. He regarded Zola's trifling concession as an act of great generosity, and it was to mark his sense of it that he solicited for his friend the Cross of the Legion of Honour. Pressed both by Daudet and Flaubert, M. Bardoux showed himself very favourably disposed, and when, in accordance with usage, he was visited by Zola, he told him straightly he would be gazetted on the next National Fête-day July 14, 1878. That date came and went, however, and Zola's name did not appear in the "Journal Officiel"--the cross promised to him going, instead, to Ferdinand Fabre. Other occasions presented themselves, Bardoux was often urged to keep his promise, but as often evaded it, and of course when the uproar provoked by Zola's paper on his fellow-novelists supervened, it afforded a good excuse for shelving the matter altogether. Meantime the affair had become common talk in certain literary circles, and Zola, who felt that he was being made ridiculous, had more than once threatened to fling the cross in Bardoux's face if he should eventually tender it. Alexis, in recounting the affair, throws virtually all the blame on the Minister; but the latter, after various paltry and untruthful excuses, which certainly put him in a bad light, told Edmond de Goncourt that if he had failed to keep his promise it was not his fault, but really that of his colleagues in the Government.[10] It really seems to be the case that the question whether Zola should be decorated was made an affair of State, solemnly debated by the Council of Ministers at the Élysée Palace, Marshal MacMahon being in the chair, probably with his usual cigar between his lips, and his usual bottle of green Chartreuse standing handy on a cheffonnier, in order that he might help himself whenever "he felt so disposed," which, according to the scandal-mongers of the day, was pretty often. And the brave, honest, and narrow-minded Marshal, who--perhaps at his wife's instigation--absolutely refused to promote the impious Renan from the rank of chevalier to that of officer of the Legion of Honour, was in thorough agreement with all the Ministers who opposed the unlucky Bardoux when he asked that the red ribbon might be conferred on the obscene Zola. On his side, the latter, ignorant of the real circumstances of the case, and more and more annoyed by the spiteful allusions to the affair which appeared in some of the newspapers, issued an open letter formally signifying his renunciation of the red ribbon, with the result that for some years there was no further question of "decorating" the foremost novelist of France.