“But this is getting burlesque,” said Emile Blondet.
I don’t know if you have ever remarked, my dear Monsieur Gaston, that in men of real talent there is always great leniency of judgment. In this, Joseph Bridau is pre-eminent.
“I think with you,” he said, “that if Dorlange takes this step, and enters politics, he will be lost to art. But, after all, why should he not succeed in the Chamber? He expresses himself with great facility, and seems to me to have ideas at his command. Look at Canalis when he was made deputy! ‘What! a poet!’ everybody cried out,—which didn’t prevent him from making himself a fine reputation as orator, and becoming a minister.”
“But the first question is how to get into the Chamber,” said Emile Blondet. “Where does Dorlange propose to stand?”
“Why, naturally, for one of the rotten boroughs of the ‘National.’ I don’t know if it has yet been chosen.”
“General rule,” said the writer for the “Debats.” “To obtain your election, even though you may have the support of an active and ardent party, you must also have a somewhat extended political notoriety, or, at any rate, some provincial backing of family or fortune. Has Dorlange any of those elements of success?”
“As for the backing of a family, that element is particularly lacking,” replied Bixiou; “in fact, in his case, it is conspicuously absent.”
“Really?” said Emile Blondet. “Is he a natural child?”
“Nothing could be more natural,—father and mother unknown. But I believe, myself, that he can be elected. It is the ins and outs of his political ideas that will be the wonder.”
“He is a republican, I suppose, if he is a friend of those ‘National’ gentlemen, and resembles Danton?”