296 RECOLLECTIONS OF FORTY YEARS. 



man who succeeds, not the one who ought to have 

 succeeded. 



"Thus, the persons who were at first surprised to 

 hear of your election were but very imperfectly ac- 

 quainted with the spirit which governs our company. 

 You have cultivated the most difficult of styles one 

 which has for a long time been abandoned among us 

 that of action. You are one of the small band of those 

 who have maintained the ancient French tradition of a 

 brilliant and glorious existence, one useful to all your 

 fellow men. Politics and warfare are too lofty appli- 

 cations of the human intelligence for the Academy 

 ever to have passed them over. Marshal de Villars, 

 Marshal de Belle-Isle, Marshal de Eichelieu, and 

 Marshal de Beauvau, had no more literary titles to 

 election than you have. They had won victories. 

 Failing this qualification, which has become a rare one, 

 we have chosen the master par excellence in the art of 

 overcoming difficulties, the hardy speculator who has 

 always won his wager in the pursuit of the probable ; 

 the virtuoso who has practised with such consummate 

 tact the great and lost art of life. If Christopher 

 Columbus lived in our day we should have made him 

 a member of the Academy. The man who is quite 

 certain to be a member is the general who one day 

 brings back victory to our standard. We shall not 

 quarrel with him as to the nature of his prose, and 

 shall regard him as a very fit member of the Academy. 

 "We shall elect him by acclamation, without concern- 



