And again, when the question of his nomination to the French Academy was under discussion, he wrote a very similar sentence: "I can hardly tell you why I would not accept this candidature. This, perhaps, will best render my idea: I am not of the stuff of which academicians are made. This is no outburst of plebeian pride--the most insolent pride of any; it is merely my true estimate of my own position." At another time he said, excusing himself for not having asked a person of high position and a friend of his to the funeral of his mother: "Whatever ignorance and enviousness may say to the contrary, there are barriers between the different classes of society which cannot be disregarded without unseemliness. My 'neglect' was but the consequence of this conviction." He has left carelessly here and there embedded in the text of an everyday letter some phrase which seems like a proverb, so beautiful and comprehensive is it. For instance, speaking of the costliness of the Paris _salons_, he says: "The most beautiful abodes, my dear friend, are those where the devil finds nothing to look upon." Of the degeneracy of modern thought he speaks thus: "These noble convictions are passing away, and every thing is subjected to the feeble equations of reason; all things are discussed, calculated, weighed, and the heart would appear to be a superfluity of creation, so little are its holy inspirations followed!" And of books and their readers he says: "We do not all read a book alike, but each takes from it only what his individual nature is capable of appropriating. The prejudices of divers schools of literature, the rivalry of various political, philosophical, and religious opinions, are all so many spectacles through which we judge the beauties or defects of any work."