Octave Uzanne.
In a work printed in this manner, just as in a theatre, the mise en scène is often detrimental to the piece; the one murders the other—it cannot be otherwise—the public applauds, but the writer who has the worship of his art sorrowfully resigns himself, and inwardly protests against the condescension of which he has had experience.
Two volumes, then, under a form which thus imprisons the strolling, sauntering, inventive, and paradoxical spirit, will be sufficient for my lady readers. Very soon we shall meet again in books with vaster horizons, and “ceilings not so low,” to employ an expression which well describes the moral imprisonment in which I am enveloped by the graces and exquisite talent of my collaborateur, Paul Avril.
Let it be understood, then, that I have no personal literary pretensions in this work. As the sage Montaigne says in his Essays, “I have here but collected a heap of foreign flowers, and brought of my own only the string which binds them together.”
Octave Uzanne.
