"Your work, then, is antagonistic to the Government?" he asked.
"Yes, monsieur."
"Is it very strong?"
"Too strong, it would seem."
"And there is risk in printing it?"
"So we are told."
"All right I will print your work and run the risk...."
The two poets both held out their hands to M. Barthélemy, who reciprocated their greeting.
Ten days later the Villéliade, for which he had advanced the cost of printing, paper, binding, etc., made its appearance, and, as we have said, ran through fifteen editions! This printer, who favoured the Opposition in the time of the Bourbons and also under Louis-Philippe, was our good and brave friend Auguste Barthélemy, since representative for Eure-et-Loir, both to the Constituante and to the Législative. He was obliged to flee the country after 2 December, and he stayed five months in Brussels; now, having returned to France and having refused to take oath as conseiller général he lives in his château of Lévéville, a league from Chartres. Let us hasten to state that it was not out of his savings as a printer that he bought this château; no, alas! his commercial loyalty, of which we have just had an instance, cost him, on the contrary, something like a hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand francs! That is the history of the Villéliade. I have only to add that in the notes to the Sixth Song of the Énéide Barthélemy stated that the poem was written by Méry alone.