new literary poison—"he was a Rousseau turned choirboy and drunk with sacramental wine."
Anatole France does not relish the rhetoric of Chateaubriand. His father had loved it, and sickened him with it, in his youth, by an overdose. He continues:
"It is thanks to the viscount (Chateaubriand) that reliquaries fill bric-à-brac shops where Christs and Buddhas jostle one another and that ladies of light virtue cover their pianos and drape their alcoves with ecclesiastical vestments impregnated with incense and holy oil. It was a singularly ill turn that Chateaubriand did you!"
Silence falls again, still heavier. The logs burn red. There is a touch of feverish anxiety in the library. France rises:
"I trust that you will be elected, Monsignor."
Well done, M. Brousson!
This scene, one perceives, is central. In it Anatole France figures in the most serious rôle that he played—champion of this world against the next. For the most part he seems to have impressed his secretary as a very doughty, undaunted, unshaken champion, full of gusto and gaiety to the end, immensely enjoying his life, on intimate and congenial terms with the world, the flesh, and the devil.
There were one or two things, however, which shook the Master a little, and one or two things which bored him. He didn't much relish formal society, and his servant Josephine had to be instructed to keep a sharp eye upon him to see that he changed his shirt when he set out for a drawing-room where cabinet ministers were to be entertained. On these occasions he was
