- broidered coat. There are no arm-chairs, but
wooden benches ill adapted to the ease of age. The classical hall is about as squalid and uncomfortable a vestibule of posterity as one could wish to see, and is so ill-ventilated that, when it is full, as it always is, to excess, the spectators are frequently threatened with apoplexy or syncope. Whenever I get away sound and alive from beneath the celebrated cupola, I always feel that I have escaped unharmed from actual peril.
Then the newly elected stands at a reading-desk and reads out the eulogy of his predecessor, which a committee has already been convened to consider, and when he terminates his "discourse," his godfathers warmly shake his hand, and he sits down. The academician who receives him in the name of the august assembly replies, and reads his discourse sitting, placed between the chancellor and secretary, at the centre table, on a high daïs. When the speakers read their discourses as M. Brunetière reads his, it is a pleasure, whether you agree with them or not; but this is rare, for M. Brunetière was meant by nature to be a preacher or an actor. His elocution is magnificent, his voice arresting; whereas the average man is hard to follow and, in winter, is apt to have a cold in his head. After the ceremony, greetings during the exit, which is slow and precarious, and in the big courtyard proclaim you a fashionable
