Lucien was about thirty or thirty-two at this period. Until the downfall of Napoleon his career had been administrative: he had been made auditor to the State Council and a prefect at twenty-five. In spite of much physical suffering which saddened his life, he was indeed one of the best-hearted and most benevolent persons I ever knew. For five years I saw Lucien two or three times a week; I do not think that, during the long period of intimacy, I ever heard him jibe at his _confrères_, or complain or whine; he was one of those gentle, melancholy and tranquil spirits one sees in dreams. I do not know what became of him; after 1829 I lost sight of him completely. Twenty-two years of absence and of separation will certainly have driven me from his remembrance; those twenty-two years have engraved him the more deeply on mine. M. Arnault was quite different. I never knew a more subtle, mordant, satirical nature than this brilliant person owned. In military parlance he would have been described as a damned good shot. Neither Bertrand nor Lozes ever returned a straight thrust more rapidly and more surely than did M. Arnault, on every occasion, by a word or an epigram or a flash of wit. He was but an indifferent dramatic author, but he excelled in fables and satire. Once, in a fit of despondency, he let fall what was probably the only tear he shed, like that of Aramis upon the death of Porthos: he dipped his pen in the salt drops, and wrote the following lines--a gem that André Chénier, or Millevoye, Lamartine or Victor Hugo might have wished to write:-- LA FEUILLE "De ta tige détachée, Pauvre feuille desséchée, Où vas-tu?--Je n'en sais rien. L'orage a brisé le chêne Qui seul était mon soutien; De son inconstante haleine Le zéphir ou l'aquilon, Depuis ce jour me promène De la forêt à la plaine, De la montagne au vallon. Je vais où le vent me mène Sans me plaindre ou m'effrayer; Je vais où va toute chose, Où vont la feuille de rose Et la feuille de laurier!" I do not know what the famous poets of my day would have given to have written those fifteen lines; I know I would have given any of my plays the fates might have chosen. M. Arnault's great ambition was, unluckily, to write for the stage. He had begun by _Marius à Minturnes_, at the time when he was with Monsieur. The tragedy was produced in 1790, and in spite of the prediction of the Comte de Provence, who had asserted that a tragedy without a woman must be a failure, it was a great success. Saint-Phal played young Marius, Vanhove Marius, and Saint-Prix le Cimbre. That was the happy period when men of the talent of Saint-Prix accepted parts in which they came on only in one scene, and in that single scene uttered a few lines, _e.g._:--