Veron, the editor of the Paris Constitutionnel, is a transcendent specimen of the voluptuary. He is a large, fleshy, sensual, though by no means coarse-looking man, with the marks of high living and animal enjoyment on all his features. He first made a fortune by selling a quack medicine, after which he became proprietor of the Constitutionnel. His paper is conducted on the quack medicine principle, with a shrewd view to the profits, and represents the ultra-conservative side on all public questions. Latterly Veron has made an arrangement with Louis Napoleon, by which it has become in some sort the special organ of that functionary. This has made the editor doubly famous, and in consequence of the crowd desiring to see him which surrounded the Café de Paris, where he had long dined regularly every day, he has been compelled to abandon that elegant establishment, and set up a table for himself. He has done this in a princely manner, and from his position, and the Apicius-like dinners which he gives, finds no difficulty in assembling at his daily banquets the élite of Parisian viveurs. Among his guests are M. Roqueplan, of the opera; M. Scribe, the dramatist; Jules Janin; M. Bertin, editor of the Journal des Débats; M. Romieu, Mlle. Rachel, and Mlle. Brohan. In all some fifty persons have a standing invitation, and come when they choose. Covers are laid every day for twelve, and those who are there at the time, which is six o'clock, take their places. At half-past eight the host puts on his hat and departs, but the guests remain, and prolong the festival at their pleasure. It is said that these dinners not only combine every thing in the perfections of gastronomy, but that they are equally piquant for the wit and brilliancy of the conversation that attends them.
Eugene Sue is now a member of the French Assembly; but he still finds time to labor for democracy and socialism with his pen. He has commenced the publication in one of the journals of a new romance, called La bonne Aventure. From a few chapters, it is evident that it will possess the enthralling interest of most of his works, and will display his varied and vast talent in the portraiture of character and the invention of incident. He is as intent as ever Mr. Cooper was, upon making the novel a teacher and illustrator of opinions.
George Sand has completed a new drama, which, from the title, Le Famille du Charpentier, we suspect to be taken out of her delightful Compagnon du Tour de France. She appears to be following in the footsteps of Dumas, in arranging her novels into plays. She has met with a severe check in the refusal of the authorities to allow a play from her pen to be produced at the Théâtre St. Martin, entitled "Claudia." Every thing had been prepared for it, and considerable expense incurred, when the Censor refused to grant a license.
Alphonse Karr, the French novelist, published for the late holidays a very successful book called Voyage autour de mon jardin (Journey around my garden). It is a prose poem in honor of nature and the joys which nature gives to the heart. Prince Soltikoff has also brought out his travels in India and Prussia in a splendid style. One of the most elegant and universally admired works of the season at Paris, is Aix-les-Bains, by Amédée Achard, illustrated by Eugene Ginain. Aix-les-Bains is a favorite watering place in Savoy, and this book is an account of a summer passed there.
In the number for the first of December, of the Paris Revue des Deux Mondes, a writer introduces and dissects poems, unedited until now in the Romance tongue, of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Two new publications from their collection of manuscripts, by the Toulouse Academy of Floral Games, perfectly exhibit the state of the Romaunt tongue and poetry from 1324 to 1496.