I cannot say whether the epigram is good or bad; I will leave the question to be decided by the Academy, which is learned in such matters, since it accepted M. de Sainte-Aulaire because of a quatrain. But I know very well that all the people I had seen the previous day laughing at the Lafarge family, on the morrow laughed at the Picot family.
Since the death of Demoustier there had not been an unpublished verse circulated in our little town; so Auguste's eight lines made a great sensation for eight days after.
I confess that the stir made over an absent man dazzled me. I was fired with ambition to have the glory attached to me of being talked of when away, and at the Abbé Grégoire's first lesson I begged him to teach me to make French verses, instead of insisting so tiresomely on my making Latin ones.
These lines of Auguste Lafarge were the first rays of light thrown upon my life; he kindled in me ambitions vague and nebulous until then; things which had been dreams rather than definite ideas, aspirations rather than determinations.
And it will be seen that Auguste Lafarge's influence on me was continued by Adolphe de Leuven.
I asked Abbé Grégoire to teach me to make French verses, for he was the official poet of the countryside.
I have said that since the days of Demoustier not an unpublished poem had tickled the wits of my fellow townspeople; but I am mistaken; for at every festival, at all christenings or baptisms of any importance, the Abbé Grégoire was called upon in his capacity as poet.
I have never seen more worthy verses than his were; therefore, when I made this request, which would have been tolerably presumptuous made to Hugo or Lamartine, "Teach me to make French verses," the Abbé Grégoire was not in the least taken aback, but answered simply—
"I shall be delighted; but you will be tired of it, as you are of everything else, at the end of a week."