Theophile Gautier's poetry was
decadent, his style sparkling with great wit; yet the man was wanting
in force of ideas. When, however, he added that Gautier would do
nothing that would last because he was engaged in journalism, he spoke
with all his hatred of a profession that refused him the honour he
deemed his due. Eugene Sue, also, he looked upon with jaundiced eyes,
as being a rival whose material success amazed him--a rival, indeed,
whom no less a critic than Sainte-Beuve erroneously declared to be his
equal. Sue, he informed Madame Hanska, was a man of narrow bourgeois
mind, perceiving merely certain insignificant details of the vulgar
evils of French contemporary society. To Balzac, besides, it was
blasphemy in Sue that he spoke slightingly of the century which to
this Legitimist was the grandest epoch in French history, slightingly
of Louis XIV., who, in the said Legitimist's opinion, was France's
premier king.
The latter half of 1838 was spent at Les Jardies, where the novelist
was busy either with his pen or in improving the interior and exterior
of the property. A scheme for cultivating a pine-apple orchard in his
grounds kept him from fretting over the sorry termination of his
Sardinian dream.
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