liqueurs, on which he could play the subtlest harmonies of the senses? He certainly at one time possessed an incredible wardrobe, from which he would select and combine, with infinite labour, the costume of the day; apologising, on a certain misty afternoon, for not employing the Scotch symphony which had once before so perfectly suited a similar day: "but it takes my servant so long to prepare it!" On one occasion a distinguished French writer, one of the most recent of Academicians, was astonished, on opening a letter from the Comte de Montesquiou, to find along with the letter a manuscript copy of Balzac's Curé de Tours, written in an illiterate hand. Nothing whatever was said about it, and on meeting his correspondent, the Academician inquired if it was by oversight that the manuscript had been enclosed. "Oh, no," was the answer, "the fact is, my cook and my butler are always quarrellmg, and in order to occupy them and keep them out of mischief, I give them Balzac's stories to copy out; and I send the copies to my friends. Père Goriot I sent to Leconte de Lisle: I only sent you a short one."
