The Mayor of the 9th Ward, M. Cronier, was braver: he kept the thousand francs and was dismissed. I wrote him this note: "29 _April_ 1832. "SIR, "I hear with keen sorrow of the disgrace of which Madame la Duchesse de Berry's benevolence has in your case been the cause or the pretext. You will have, for your consolation, the esteem of the public, the sense of your independence, and the happiness of having sacrificed yourself to the cause of the unfortunate. "I have the honour, etc., etc." The Mayor of the 4th Ward is a very different man: M. Cadet de Gassicourt, a poet-apothecary composing little verses, writing in his time, in the time of liberty and the Empire, an agreeable classical declaration against my romantic prose and that of Madame de Staël[387]. M. Cadet de Gassicourt is the hero who took the cross of the front of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois by assault, and who, in a proclamation on the cholera, gave us to understand that possibly those wicked Carlists were the wine-poisoners to whom the people had already done ample justice[388]. And so the illustrious champion wrote me the following letter: "PARIS, 18 _April_ 1832. "SIR, "I was not at the Mayor's office when the person sent by you called: this will explain to you the delay in my reply. "M. the Prefect of the Seine, when declining to accept the money which you undertook to offer him, seems to me to have traced the line of conduct which the members of the Municipal Council must follow. I shall imitate M. the Prefect's example the more readily inasmuch as I think that I know and as I share the sentiments which must have prompted his refusal. "I will refer only in passing to the title of 4 Royal Highness' given with some affectation to the person whose mouth-piece you constitute yourself: the daughter-in-law of Charles X. is no more a 'Royal Highness' in France than her father-in-law is King[389]! But, Sir, there is no one who is not morally convinced that this lady is very actively at work and that she is spending sums of money very much more considerable than that of which she has entrusted the employment to yourself to stir up trouble in our country and bring about civil war. The alms which she pretends to make are but a means for drawing upon herself and her party an attention and a kindly feeling which her intentions are far from justifying. You will therefore not think it extraordinary that a magistrate, firmly attached to the constitutional royalty of Louis-Philippe, should refuse a relief which comes from such a source and should look to true citizens for purer bounties addressed sincerely to humanity and the country. "I am, Sir, with a very distinguished regard, etc. "F. CADET DE GASSICOURT." [Sidenote: Cadet de Gassicourt.]