"Well, just think of it! that unlucky parroquet went and hid itself to die right underneath the sofa cover; we thought it was lost at first; we searched all over for it, and finally we found it there, the day after our shooting party." "Did it ever bite people?" I timidly asked General Bro. "_It?_ Never!" was the colonel's reply. I thought of showing the colonel my finger, which was still badly marked; but I reflected that it was much better to leave the colonel in ignorance as to his parroquet's defects of character and under the illusion that it had died, as indicated, a noble death. Now that many years have passed by since that event, and probably not a single feather of the unfortunate Jacquot remains, I humbly confess my crime, and ask for forgiveness from all whom it may concern. CHAPTER VIII Barthélemy and Méry--M. Éliça Gallay--Méry the draught-player and anatomist--_L'Épître à Sidi Mahmoud_--The Ponthieu library--Soulé--_The Villéliade_--Barthélemy the printer--Méry the improvisator--The _Vœux de la nouvelle année_--The pastiche of _Lucrèce_ At the beginning of the preceding chapter we spoke of poets who were prophets; now let us say a little about poets who fought for their craft. And among these, the most undaunted and persevering were without doubt MM. Barthélemy and Méry, who did the roughest kind of work as sappers, and helped in the toughest assaults in the first line of fighters. Both were Marseillais, but they were hardly acquainted with one another in 1825. M. Méry had never left Marseilles and M. Barthélemy, having left it as a child, had scarcely ever been there again. M. Barthélemy (whom, if we may, we will call simply Barthélemy for brevity) was educated at the college of Juilly and received there an excellent education in Greek and Latin; he had already composed at Marseilles, after the style of Mathurin Régnier, a satire which had been much talked of, though never printed, when he published an ode to Charles X. at the time of the coronation. It was lost sight of beneath the successes of more famous poetic rivals of the period, even before it became known, and Barthélemy saw his ode pass away unnoticed, although it contained some striking stanzas, among them this one addressed to Camoëns:-- "Et toi, chantre fameux des conquérants de l'Inde, Fier de ton indigence et des lauriers du Pinde, Tu nageais sur les flots de l'abîme irrité, Et du double trépas vainqueur digne d'envie, D'une main tu sauvais ta vie, De l'autre tu sauvais ton immortalité!" Barthélemy had inherited a certain patrimony from his father, and he lived quietly in the hôtel _Grand-Balcon_ 11 rue Traversière. Méry had also made his début at the age of eighteen, and paid for it by eight months' imprisonment. His début took the form of a pamphlet against M. Éliça Gallay.