"Yes, certainly."
"What is it?"
"An epistle to Sidi Mahmoud."
You have forgotten who Sidi Mahmoud was, have you not? Well then, I will refresh your memory.
He was the envoy sent by our friend the Bey of Tunis—who was then on not quite such amicable terms with us as he is to-day—to congratulate Charles X. on his accession to the throne. Sidi Mahmoud was received in state on 5 May at the Foreign Office, by M. le Baron de Damas, surrounded by peers, deputies and general officers. When the usher announced the ambassador, everybody rose with the exception of M. de Damas, who, representing the King of France, remained seated and covered. M. de Damas saluted the ambassador with a wave of his hand, and signed to him to be seated. The ambassador then delivered his letters and sat down, and it was left to an Arabian interpreter to translate them. Paris, having nothing special at that moment with which to occupy its attention, gave itself wholly and entirely to Sidi Mahmoud: his thirty years, his fine dark face, his white dolman embroidered in sky-blue silk and fastened with gold hooks, the two shawls that formed his turban and the cashmir robe flung over his shoulder. Méry was perfectly right; Barthélemy saw at once, as he had, that the plan was excellent. Unfortunately he had to go to London.
"Compose your epistle alone," he said to Méry, "and on my return we will talk again about the satire."
Barthélemy left for London, and Méry composed his epistle. When the epistle was composed, the worst part of his task was not over, for the question now was how to get it published.
Méry took his epistle to Ponthieu, who declared that nobody was reading poetry then! Méry naturally retorted by pointing to the twenty editions of Casimir Delavigne, to the fifteen editions of Béranger, to the twelve editions of Lamartine, to the ten editions of Victor Hugo; at each name Méry uttered, Ponthieu said—
"Oh! M. Casimir Delavigne, that is a different matter! Oh! M. Béranger, that is a different matter! Oh! M. Victor Hugo, that is a different matter! Oh! M. Lamartine, that is a different matter!"