Some of these satellites perceive the ingratitude of their
great man; others feel that they are simply made tools of; many weary
of the life; very few remain contented with that sweet equality of
feeling and sentiment which is the only reward that should be looked
for in an intimacy with a superior man,--a reward that contented Ali
when Mohammed raised him to himself.
Many of these men, misled by vanity, think themselves quite as capable
as their patron. Pure devotion, such as Modeste conceived it, without
money and without price, and more especially without hope, is rare.
Nevertheless there are Mennevals to be found, more perhaps in Paris
than elsewhere, men who value a life in the background with its
peaceful toil; these are the wandering Benedictines of our social
world, which offers them no other monastery. These brave, meek hearts
live, by their actions and in their hidden lives, the poetry that
poets utter. They are poets themselves in soul, in tenderness, in
their lonely vigils and meditations,--as truly poets as others of the
name on paper, who fatten in the fields of literature at so much a
verse; like Lord Byron, like all who live, alas, by ink, the
Hippocrene water of to-day, for want of a better.
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