This great poet is still ignorant of his finest triumph (though he
owes it to the fact of being a Burgundian), namely, that of living in
the town of Soulanges, so rounded and perfected within itself that it
knows nothing of the modern Pleiades, not even their names.

A hundred Gourdons made poetry under the Empire, and yet they tell us
it was a period that neglected literature! Examine the "Journal de la
Libraire" and you will find poems on the game of draughts, on
backgammon, on tricks with cards, on geography, typography, comedy,
etc.,--not to mention the vaunted masterpieces of Delille on Piety,
Imagination, Conversation; and those of Berchoux on Gastromania and
Dansomania, etc. Who can foresee the chances and changes of taste, the
caprices of fashion, the transformations of the human mind? The
generations as they pass along sweep out of sight the last fragments
of the idols they found on their path and set up other gods,--to be
overthrown like the rest.

Sarcus, a handsome little man with a dapple-gray head, devoted himself
in turn to Themis and to Flora,--in other words, to legislation and a
greenhouse. For the last twelve years he had been meditating a book on
the History of the Institution of Justices of the Peace, "whose
political and judiciary role," he said, "had already passed through
several phases, all derived from the Code of Brumaire, year IV.; and
to-day that institution, so precious to the nation, had lost its power
because the salaries were not in keeping with the importance of its
functions, which ought to be performed by irremovable officials."
Rated in the community as an able man, Sarcus was the accepted
statesman of Madame Soudry's salon; you can readily imagine that he
was the leading bore. They said he talked like a book. Gaubertin