"O my pipe! every day do I owe thee that expressive emblem of humility which religion only places once a year on the brow of the adoring Christian: Man is but dust and ashes.... That, in fact, is all which remains at the last of the tenderest or most magnanimous heart, of hearts over-intoxicated with joy or pride, or those consumed with the bitterest pains. "These small remnants of men, these ashes, the lightest zephyr scatter into the empty air.... Where, then, is the dust of Alexander, where the ashes of Gengis? They are nothing more than vain historic phantoms; those great subduers of nations, those terrible oppressors of men, what are they but fine-sounding names, objects of vain enthusiasm or of useless malediction! "I, too, shall soon perish; all that makes up my being, my very name, will disappear like light smoke.... In a few days' time, perhaps at the very spot where I now write, it will not even be known that I have ever existed.... Now, does something imperishable breathe forth and rise up on high from this perishable body? Does there dwell in man one spark worthy to light the calumet of the angels upon the pavements of the heavens?... O my pipe! chase away, banish this ambitious and baneful desire after the unknown and the impenetrable!" We may be mistaken, but it seems to us that one would search in vain for anything more melancholy in _Werther_ or more bitter in _Don Juan_, than the pages we have just read. CHAPTER X Rabbe's friends_--La Sœur grise_--The historical résumés--M. Brézé's advice--An imaginative man--Berruyer's style--Rabbe with his hairdresser, his concierge and confectioner--_La Sœur grise_ stolen_--Le Centaure._ Alphonse Rabbe's most assiduous disciples were Thiers and Mignet;[1] they came to see him most days and treated him with the respect of pupils towards their master. But Rabbe was independent to the verge of intractability; and always ready to rear even under the hand that caressed him. Now, Rabbe discerned that these two writers were already on the way to become historians, had no desire to make a third in a trio with them and resolved to be more true to life than the historians and to write a novel. Walter Scott was then all the rage in London and Paris. Rabbe seized paper and pen and wrote the title of his novel on the first leaf, _La Sœur grise._ Then he stopped, and I dare go so far even as to say that this first page was never turned over. True, what Rabbe did in imagination was much more real to him than what he actually did. Félix Bodin had just begun to inaugurate the era of _Résumés historiques_; the publishers, Lecointe and Roret, went about asking for summaries from anyone at all approaching an author; résumés showered in like hail; the very humblest scholar felt himself bound to send in his résumé.