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Academy, found his secretary still busy copying; he did not complain, for he was very indulgent. He let him go on with his work and began talking about the business done that day at the Academy. Saintine stopped writing and listened. The sitting had been an important one. The distribution of the annual prizes was at hand, and the members had had to determine between the poems sent in for competition.

The subject proposed was "The happiness derived from study in all conditions of life." The competition had been severe, the choice difficult and embarrassing. At last M. de Ségur said that two poems of superior excellence had obtained all the votes. He did not know, as yet, the names of the successful poets laureate, but he remembered the motto written on one of the Manuscripts. Saintine trembling, with his face bent over his paper, was anxiously listening. He had chosen as his motto a line out of his own poem :

"Je voudrais d'un laurier faire hommage à ma mère.”

When he heard Count de Ségur quoting this line, he rose pale with emotion, and, with tears in his eyes, he said to M. de Ségur: "My fair copy has for a long while been finished, but I was waiting for your return to know my fate; allow me now to go and tell my mother that my prayer has been granted. You have unwittingly informed me that I have won the prize for poetry."

Thus it was that M. de Ségur learnt that his private secretary was a poet laureate.

Saintine, from this time forth, devoted himself entirely to literature. Jonathan le Visionnaire, a set of sensational narratives, in which Philosophy toys with the Supernatural and the Real, was his first prose work. Again a poetical competition with "Mutual instruction as its subject won for him a prize at the Academy. After this he sought a new field for the display of his talents and wrote La Campagne des Alpes, a work so able that it was mistaken for the production of a military veteran. Walter Scott in his pamphlet on France and Napoleon, after quoting several passages out of Saintine's book,

wrote in a note: "extracted from the History of the Campagne des Alpes by General Saintine." This error is all the more excusable in a writer like Walter Scott that General Jomini fell into it himself.

Saintine, who now resided at Belleville, was very intimate with Scribe, Désaugiers, Mélesville and others, and co-operated with them in joint authorship. His lighter productions he signed simply Xavier, reserving for his more serious works the name of Saintine. In 1832 he published Le Mutile. This was the first Act, as it were, of a trilogy, of which Picciola and Seul! are the following Acts. The same thought pervades this triple drama, the baneful influence of isolation, the Væ soli! of the Ancients.

The publication of Le Mutilé brought to Saintine a letter from Châteaubriand, in which we read the following passage: "Vous, Monsieur, qui venez quand je m'en vas, soutenez la gloire de la France; à vous l'avenir, à moi le passé dont pourtant je ne me soucie guère."

With regard to Picciola, M. Grimaud, in his work entitled Les poëtes lauréats, gives the following anecdote :

"Un jour Michel Masson, intime ami de Saintine, vint le voir et le trouva feuilletant un manuscrit quelque peu jauni. Qu'est-ce que cela? demanda-t-il.-Un roman que j'ai fait pour moi, pour moi seul, pour ma propre satisfaction.-Eh bien, pour la mienne, lisez-le-moi. Il vous ennuiera.—Je le verrai bien. La lecture achevée, Michel Masson lui dit: Mon ami, publiez votre Picciola, publiez-la sans crainte; et je vous le prédis, ce sera votre livre."

Michel Masson had judged right. Picciola won for Saintine the highest distinction the French Academy could award, the Montyon Prize; to this work he was further indebted for the cross of the Legion of Honour, and to it also he owed the prosperous beginning of the second portion of his life's journey, the happy marriage which united him to an affectionate and devoted wife.

Picciola was a great literary success. Music, painting, the stage, even fashion, in all its frivolities, borrowed in turn from

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the Author of Picciola either the sentiment or the title of his book. There was a time when the flower of the Fénestrelle prisoner blossomed everywhere; on the piano as a musical rêverie; on the easel as a painting; those who in the evening saw Picciola represented on the stage, might have contemplated, in the morning, Picciola, a real living flower at a flowershow.

Saintine was not dazzled by the great renown of his book. He was one of those writers who believe that the man who possesses the talent of writing will not be asked: What success hast thou achieved? but: Whom hast thou comforted? and he had the satisfaction one day to find that one prisoner at least had derived comfort from the perusal of his Picciola. In 1843, a young man (Napoleon III.), who had been in too great a hurry to trade upon his great name, was atoning in the fortress of Ham for the mistake of his premature step. Saintine, who always sympathized with suffering, wherever it might be, sent the prisoner a copy of his book. A few days later he received the following reply:

Monsieur,

Du Fort de Ham, 15 août, 1843.

Toutes les fois qu'un auteur distingué veut bien m'envoyer son ouvrage, je le reçois avec la reconnaissance que l'on doit, dans ma position surtout, à toute marque d'intérêt ou de sympathie; mais l'envoi que vous m'avez fait de votre charmant livre, m'a non-seulement fait éprouver un sentiment de reconnaissance pour vous, il m'a vivement touché. En effet, Picciola adressée à moi, à Ham, c'est un souvenir agréable, c'est une leçon, c'est une consolation même. Votre livre me rappelle le bon cœur de ma grand'mère, il me fait souvenir de l'instabilité des choses humaines, des malheurs particuliers qui existent sous tous les régimes; il me console en me prouvant que l'homme philosophe a dans son cœur des trésors cachés qui, partout s'il le veut, lui font goûter le bonheur, et qu'enfin si les puissants ont pour eux le nombre des hommages, les opprimés possèdent quelques dévouements d'élite qui, par leur sincérité et leur tendresse, valent mieux que les applaudissements de la foule.

Recevez donc, Monsieur, mes remercîments pour votre bienveillant souvenir et croyez à mes sentiments de haute estime.

NAPOLÉON LOUIS.

The day after receiving this letter Saintine again received, by post, a blossom of the Heliotrope which the illustrious captive cultivated on the terrace of his prison, with the dedication written by the future Emperor:

"Offert par le prisonnier de Ham

à l'auteur de Picciola."

The last twenty years of Saintine's life were spent at Marlyle-Roi. It is there that he wrote the works that followed his

Picciola, the chief of which are Seul, Le chemin des Écoliers, La seconde Vie. It is there that he delighted in the evening hours, to forget, in the intimacy of his neighbours, that, at that very moment, he was being applauded in several of the Paris theatres.

His

Up to the last day of his life he was kind to all around him, an affectionate husband, dearly attached to his daughter and to his son-in-law, and doting on his grandchildren. last illness was not of long duration. When he was told that death was near at hand, he drew from his finger the ring which he had worn since his marriage-day, placed it on his wife's finger and peacefully breathed his last.

LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF X. B. SAINTINE, WITH THE DATE OF THEIR FIRST PUBLICATION.

1823 Poems, Odes, Epistles.

1825 Jonathan le Visionnaire, contes philosophiques et moraux. 1826 Histoire des Guerres d'Italie, Campagne des Alpes.

1830 Histoire de la Civilisation antediluvienne.

1832 Le Mutilé.

1834 Une Maîtresse de Louis XIII.

1836 Picciola.

1839 Antoine.

1844 Les Récits dans la Tourelle; Le Rossignol pris au Tré

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1861 La belle Cordière et ses trois Amoureux: Le chemin des

Écoliers.

1862 Contes de toutes les couleurs: Léonard le cocher, etc. 1863 La mère Gigogne et ses trois Filles.

1864 La seconde Vie.

Saintine's Dramatical works were all joint productions, and were written in collaboration with the following writers: Ancelot, Arago, Basset, Bayard, Carmouche, Cogniard, de Courcy, Dartois, Désaugiers, Dumersan, Dumoutier, Dupeuty, Duvert, Lafitte, Laloue, Lauzanne, Masson, Mélesville, Monnier, Scribe, Thomas, Varin, de Villeneuve.

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