"Well, do you know what the man who professes to love and admire me said of me?"
"What did he say?"
"Why, he said that I was a man of IMAGINATION, yes, he did."
Méry assumed an air of consternation to oblige Rabbe. Rabbe, to revenge himself for Mignet's insult, wrote in the preface of a second edition of his résumés these crushing words—
"The pen of the historian ought not to be like a leaden pipe through which a stream of tepid water flows on to the paper."
From this moment, his wrath against historians,—modern historians, that is, of course: he worshipped Tacitus,—knew no bounds; and, when there were friends present at his house and all historians were absent, he would declaim in thunderous tones—
"Would you believe it, gentlemen, there are in France, at the present moment and of our generation and rank, historians who take it into their heads to copy the style of the veterans, Berruyer, Catrou and Rouille? Yes, in each line of their modern battles they will tell you that thirty thousand men were cut in pieces, or that they bit the dust, or that they were left lying strewn upon the scene. How behind the times these youngsters are! The other day, one of them, in describing the battle of Austerlitz, wrote this sentence: 'Twenty-five thousand Russians were drawn up in battle upon a vast frozen lake; Napoléon gave orders that firing should be directed against this lake. Bullets broke through the ice and the twenty-five thousand Russians BIT THE DUST!'"
It is curious to note that such a sentence was actually written in one of the résumés of that date. The second remark that we ought to have made will explain the comparison that Rabbe had hazarded when he spoke of himself as Hercules and of Brézé as Pirithous. He had so effectually contracted the habit of using grand oratorical metaphor and stilted language, that he could never descend to a more familiar style of speech in his relations with more ordinary people. Thus, he once addressed his hairdresser solemnly in the following terms:—
"Do not disarrange the economy of my hair too much; let the strokes of your comb fall lightly on my head, and take care, as Boileau says, that 'L'ivoire trop hâté ne se brise en vos mains!'"