The two collaborators picked up their manuscript and went forth to make a fresh attempt on another publisher, with the same result. When they had exhausted the list of well-known publishing firms, they began to approach printers with whom they had had dealings. Printers were in the same situation as publishers, and were afraid of fine, imprisonment and the withdrawal of their licenses, just in the same way: they refused. It is sad work to be left with five or six thousand lines of poetry on one's hands. And such lines! Lines which, a month later, the whole of France was to know by heart. Méry proposed to make a last attempt with a totally unknown printer. It was a desperate remedy, but desperate remedies sometimes save a patient's life. They opened the _almanack de la librairie_, to find the name of a printer which, from the succession of letters in his name, its signification, or its sound, might give some hope either to the eyes or the ears of the two poets. There was a printer called Auguste Barthélemy, who lived at No. 10 rue des Grands-Augustins. The name struck the two authors as auguring good luck to them. They took up their MS. and went to M. Barthélemy's. They found a tall young man, with an intelligent face, a firm but pleasing expression and an honest, kindly air about him. They laid their difficulties before him. "Your work, then, is antagonistic to the Government?" he asked. "Yes, monsieur." "Is it very strong?" "Too strong, it would seem." "And there is risk in printing it?" "So we are told." "All right I will print your work and run the risk...." The two poets both held out their hands to M. Barthélemy, who reciprocated their greeting. Ten days later the _Villéliade_, for which he had advanced the cost of printing, paper, binding, etc., made its appearance, and, as we have said, ran through fifteen editions! This printer, who favoured the Opposition in the time of the Bourbons and also under Louis-Philippe, was our good and brave friend Auguste Barthélemy, since representative for Eure-et-Loir, both to the _Constituante_ and to the _Législative._ He was obliged to flee the country after 2 December, and he stayed five months in Brussels; now, having returned to France and having refused to take oath as _conseiller général_ he lives in his château of Lévéville, a league from Chartres. Let us hasten to state that it was not out of his savings as a printer that he bought this château; no, alas! his commercial loyalty, of which we have just had an instance, cost him, on the contrary, something like a hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand francs! That is the history of the _Villéliade._ I have only to add that in the notes to the Sixth Song of the _Énéide_ Barthélemy stated that the poem was written by Méry alone.