Roland was above all struck with this last particular. Then the boy related their audience with the First Consul, and told how the latter had kissed and petted him, and finally recommended him to the director of the Prytanée Français.
Roland learned from the child all that he wished to know, and as it took but five minutes to go from the Rue Saint Jacques to the Luxembourg, he was at the palace in that time.
CHAPTER XXXVI. SCULPTURE AND PAINTING
When Roland returned to the Luxembourg, the clock of the palace marked one hour and a quarter after mid-day.
The First Consul was working with Bourrienne.
If we were merely writing a novel, we should hasten to its close, and in order to get there more expeditiously we should neglect certain details, which, we are told, historical figures can do without. That is not our opinion. From the day we first put pen to paper—now some thirty years ago—whether our thought were concentrated on a drama, or whether it spread itself into a novel, we have had a double end—to instruct and to amuse.
And we say instruct first, for amusement has never been to our mind anything but a mask for instruction. Have we succeeded? We think so. Before long we shall have covered with our narratives an enormous period of time; between the “Comtesse de Salisbury” and the “Comte de Monte-Cristo” five centuries and a half are comprised. Well, we assert that we have taught France as much history about those five centuries and a half as any historian.
More than that; although our opinions are well known; although, under the Bourbons of the elder branch as under the Bourbons of the younger branch, under the Republic as under the present government, we have always proclaimed them loudly, we do not believe that that opinion has been unduly manifested in our books and dramas.
We admire the Marquis de Posa in Schiller’s “Don Carlos”; but, in his stead, we should not have anticipated the spirit of that age to the point of placing a philosopher of the eighteenth century among the heroes of the sixteenth, an encyclopedist at the court of Philippe II. Therefore, just as we have been—in literary parlance—monarchical under the Monarchy, republican under the Republic, we are to-day reconstructionists under the Consulate.