In a word,
the mysterious charm that attaches to every kind of fame, even that
which is most justly due, never lasts. It is, and especially with
superficial people who are envious or sarcastic, a sensation which
passes off with the rapidity of lightning, and never returns. It would
seem as though fame, like the sun, hot and luminous at a distance, is
cold as the summit of an alp when you approach it. Perhaps man is only
really great to his peers; perhaps the defects inherent in his
constitution disappear sooner to the eyes of his equals than to those
of vulgar admirers. A poet, if he would please in ordinary life, must
put on the fictitious graces of those who are able to make their
insignificances forgotten by charming manners and complying speeches.
The poet of the faubourg Saint-Germain, who did not choose to bow
before this social dictum, was made before long to feel that an
insulting provincial indifference had succeeded to the dazed
fascination of the earlier evenings. The prodigality of his wit and
wisdom had produced upon these worthy souls somewhat the effect which
a shopful of glass-ware produces on the eye; in other words, the fire
and brilliancy of Canalis's eloquence soon wearied people who, to use
their own words, "cared more for the solid.
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