'Was there,' I said, 'any personal quarrel between Soult and Thiers?'
'Certainly there was,' said Z., 'a little one. I will not say that Soult was in Spain a successful commander, or an agreeable colleague, or an obedient subordinate, but whenever things went wrong there, Soult was the man whom the Emperor sent thither to put them to rights. Great as Thiers may be as a military critic, I venture to put him below Napoleon.'
'I have been reading,' I said, 'Falloux's reception speech, and was disappointed by it.'
'In his speech and Brifault's,' said Circourt, 'you may compare the present declamatory style and that of thirty years ago. Brifault has, or attempts to have, the _légèreté_ and the prettiness of the Restoration. Falloux is _grandiose_ and emphatic, as we all are now.'
'Falloux,' said Z., 'made an excellent speech the first time that he addressed the Chamber of Deputies. The next time he was not so successful, and after that he ceased to be listened to.
'But in the Constituent Assembly, and indeed in the Legislative, he acquired an ascendency. In those Assemblies, great moral qualities and a high social position were rarer than they were among the Deputies, and in the dangers of the country they were more wanted. Falloux possesses them all. He is honest and brave, and in his province employs liberally and usefully a large fortune.'
'Were those the merits,' I asked, 'which opened to him the doors of the Academy?'
'Certainly,' answered Z. 'As a man of letters he is nothing, as a statesman not much. We elected him in honour of his courage and his honesty, and perhaps with some regard to his fortune. We are the only independent body left, and we value in a candidate no quality more than independence.'
'I am told,' I said, 'that Falloux is now an ultra-Legitimist.'
'That is not true,' said Z. 'He is a Legitimist, but a liberal one. He would tolerate no Government, whatever were its other claims, that was not constitutional.'
'Your Academic ceremonies,' I said 'seem to me not very well imagined. There is something _fade_, almost ridiculous, in the literary minuet in which the _récipiendaire_ and the receiver are trotted out to show their paces to each other and to the Academy. The new member extolling the predecessor of whom he is the unworthy successor, the old member lauding his new colleague to his face, and assuring him that he, too, is one of the ornaments of the Society.'