I recollect that because of the noise these two controversial plays made throughout the whole of the literary world, I, who was just beginning to feel the first breath of poetry stir within me, was anxious to read them. I wrote to de Leuven, who sent me both the Liberal and the Royalist work. The Liberal work was the most praised, and, with that in my hand, I ran to announce to our young friends, Adèle, Albine and Louise, the good fortune which had befallen us from Paris. It was decided that the same evening we should read the masterpiece aloud, and, as I was the owner of the work, I was naturally promoted to the office of reader. Alas! we were but simple children, without knowledge of either side of the case, artless young folk, who wanted to amuse ourselves by clapping our hands and to be stirred to the heart by admiration. We were greatly surprised at the end of the first act, more surprised still by the end of the second, that so much fuss and noise should have been aroused by, and so much praise bestowed upon, a work, estimable, no doubt, in its way, but one which did not cause a single thrill of sentiment or passion, or rouse an echoing memory. We did not yet understand that a political passion is the most prejudiced of all passions, and that it vibrates to the innermost feeling of a disturbed country. Our reading was interrupted at the second act, and the tragedy of _Vêpres siciliennes_ was never finished, at any rate as a joint reading. Our audience had naïvely confessed that Montfort, Lorédan and Procida bored them to death, and that they much preferred Tom Thumb, Puss in Boots and other fairy tales of like nature. But this attempt did not satisfy me. When I went home to my mother, I read not only the whole of _Vêpres siciliennes_ but also _Louis IX._