De Marsay, who did not
like Canalis, made a remark whose poisoned shaft touched the poet to
the quick of his vanity. "Canalis," he said, "always reminds me of
that brave man whom Frederic the Great called up and commended after a
battle because his trumpet had never ceased tooting its one little
tune." Canalis's ambition was to enter political life, and he made
capital of a journey he had taken to Madrid as secretary to the
embassy of the Duc de Chaulieu, though it was really made, according
to Parisian gossip, in the capacity of "attache to the duchess." How
many times a sarcasm or a single speech has decided the whole course
of a man's life. Colla, the late president of the Cisalpine republic,
and the best lawyer in Piedmont, was told by a friend when he was
forty years of age that he knew nothing of botany. He was piqued,
became a second Jussieu, cultivated flowers, and compiled and
published "The Flora of Piedmont," in Latin, a labor of ten years.
"I'll master De Marsay some of these days!" thought the crushed poet;
"after all, Canning and Chateaubriand are both in politics."
Canalis would gladly have brought forth some great political poem, but
he was afraid of the French press, whose criticisms are savage upon
any writer who takes four alexandrines to express one idea.
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