But the Germans are so much on their knees before a riband, they are such fools! I spent several years among them, and have forgotten their language, out of contempt for them. You can easily see that my characters could not be Germans. If you follow this idea, you will find that I have been led by the hand to an extinct dynasty, to a Farnese, the least obscure of these extinct personages, on account of the Generals, his grandsires.
I take a character well-known to myself, I leave him the habits he has contracted in the art of going out every morning in pursuit of pleasure, then I give him more intelligence. I have never seen Signora di Belgiojoso. Rassi was a German; I have talked to him hundreds of times. I picked up the Prince while staying at Saint-Cloud in 1810 and 1811.
Ouf! I hope that you will have read this treatise three times. You say, Sir, that you do not know English: you have in Paris the bourgeois style of Walter Scott in the heavy prose of M. Delécluze, editor of the Débats, and author of a Mademoiselle de Liron which has something in it. Walter Scott's prose is inelegant and above all pretentious. One sees a dwarf who is determined not to lose an inch of his stature.
This astounding article, such as no writer has ever received from another, I have read, I now make bold to confess to you, with shouts of laughter, whenever I came to an encomium that was at all strong, and I met them at every turn. I could see the expression on the faces of my friends as they read it.
For instance the Minister d'Argout, being then Auditor to the Council of State, was my equal and, moreover, what is known as a friend; 1830 comes, he is a Minister, his clerks, whom I do not know, think that there are at least thirty artists. . . .
[3]i.e., Chapters I and II.
C. K. S. M.
[4]This sentence is left unfinished at the foot of a page, the next page beginning with "While composing," etc.
[5]This seems to refer to the Chartreuse.
C. K. S. M.