I questioned him
about Madame George Sand. What child of twenty has not been fired by
that free, proud poetry which refused to accept the cold chains of
commonplace life and justified the paradoxes of revolt by the eloquence
of the pleading and the beauty of the dream? I soon discovered that the
ideal and the real are two hostile brothers. De Balzac's works had
kindled sincere enthusiasm in my breast. Monsieur Jules Sandeau showed
me the dash of madness and of ingenuous depravity mixed with
incontestable genius in that powerful mind. He told me of De Balzac's
insane vanity, of his furious passion for wealth and luxury, of his
readiness to plunge and to drag others after him into the most hazardous
adventures, and of his insensibility to commercial honor.
After parting from Monsieur Jules Sandeau, I strolled towards a
circulating-library. I was asking the mistress of the establishment some
questions about the latest publications, when all of a sudden the glass
door opened in the most violent manner, and who should come in but
Monsieur Philoxene Boyer, rushing forward like a whirlwind, a last lock
of hair dancing on top of a bald pate, a livid complexion, a feverish
eye, a sack-overcoat friable as tinder, a hat reddened by the rain,
trousers falling in lint upon boots run down at the heel: such was the
appearance presented by Monsieur Philoxene Boyer, our old classmate at
college, and now a critic, a romantic, an uncomprehended man of genius,
and a literary man.
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