, is in five volumes, price,
nine francs post-paid.
This letter fell like a cobble-stone on a tulip. A poet, secretary of
claims, getting a stipend in a public office, drawing an annuity,
seeking a decoration, adored by the women of the faubourg
Saint-Germain--was that the muddy minstrel lingering along the quays,
sad, dreamy, worn with toil, and re-entering his garret fraught with
poetry? However, Modeste perceived the irony of the envious
bookseller, who dared to say, "I invented Canalis; I made Nathan!"
Besides, she re-read her hero's poems,--verses extremely seductive,
insincere, and hypocritical, which require a word of analysis, were it
only to explain her infatuation.
Canalis may be distinguished from Lamartine, chief of the angelic
school, by a wheedling tone like that of a sick-nurse, a treacherous
sweetness, and a delightful correctness of diction. If the chief with
his strident cry is an eagle, Canalis, rose and white, is a flamingo.
In him women find the friend they seek, their interpreter, a being who
understands them, who explains them to themselves, and a safe
confidant. The wide margins given by Didot to the last edition were
crowded with Modeste's pencilled sentiments, expressing her sympathy
with this tender and dreamy spirit.
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