In 1844, Reboul was chosen as spokesman by the deputation of Nîmes to the reception awarded M. Berryer by the town of Avignon. He says: "The illustrious orator said so many flattering things to me that I was quite confounded. He called me his _friend_.... Then, addressing us all, his words seemed so fraught with magic that the immense audience hung breathless on his lips, but when he began to speak of France his voice, trembling with love of our country, took our very souls by storm, and you should have seen those southern faces all bathed in tears of admiration. We had need of a respite before applauding--but what an explosion it was!" At another time he writes: "Where has Berryer lived that he should be able to escape the influence of the hazy phraseology of our age and keep intact that eloquence of his, at once so clear and so trenchant?" Manzoni's genius seemed to make the two poets, though not personally acquainted, companions in spirit. M. de Fresne, who knew the Milanese _littérateur_, was charged with Reboul's homage to him in verse, and Reboul himself speaks thus of the impression made on a friend of his by Manzoni's _Inni Sacri_: "We read and admired everything in the book. The hymn for the 5th of May particularly struck Gazay; he was quite beside himself, as I knew he would be. This nature, rugged and trenchant (_osseuse et brève_), which is so impatient of the milk-and-water[40] style of literature, found here a subject of enthusiasm; he rose from his chair, walked up and down the room with gigantic strides, and barely escaped breaking through the floor." His judgment of Victor Hugo is both interesting and striking. In 1862, when _Les Misérables_ was published, he comments thus on the great herald and apologist of revolution: "It is always the same glorification of the convict-prison and the house of prostitution, a theme which has for many years been dragged over our literature and our drama. I do not like Hugo's _bishop_ any more than Béranger's _curé_; the former is a fool and the latter a drunkard. The author of _Les Misérables_ is vigorous in his style, no doubt, but he carries the defects of this quality to the last pitch of absurdity. The style is vigorous and rugged, true--but _c'est du 'casse-poitrine' et du 'sacré chien,' de l'eau-de-vie de pommes-de-terre_.[41] I do not know what to expect from the next two volumes, but up to this it all seems to me to breathe the air of a low public-house (_buvette de faubourg_). The ostentatious praise of the socialist organs confirms this opinion. The multitude, as well as kings, has its flatterers. I think that honest poverty, lacking everything, and yet shutting its eyes and ears to temptation, would have been a type worthier of the author's reputation, if it were only for a change!"