Paris, June 1821
MADAME de Farcy was already acquainted, I know not how, with Delisle de Sales, who had once been confined in the Vincennes for some philosophical nonsense or other. In those days, men became famous if they scribbled a few lines of prose or published a quatrain in the Almanach des Muses. This elderly man, very kind, very cordially mediocre, was content to relax his mind and let the years roll by him. He had amassed a fine library of his own works, which he lent out to strangers and which no one in Paris ever read. Every year, in the spring, he would replenish his ideas in Germany. Fat and unwashed, he carried with him everywhere a roll of dirty paper that could be seen protruding from his pocket: he used to stop on street corners and consign his passing thoughts to this filthy scroll. On the pedestal of his marble bust, he had with his own two hands traced the following inscription, borrowed from a bust of Buffon: god, man, nature, he has explained them all. Delisle de Sales had explained them all! Such pomposities are quite amusing, but also quite disheartening. Who can flatter himself and claim that he has real talent? Might it not be that, so long as we live, we are under the sway of an illusion similar to that of Delisle de Sales? I would wager that some author who is reading this sentence believes himself a writer of genius and is in fact nothing but a cretin.
If I have lingered overlong on my account of this good man of the Saint-Lazare pavilions, it is only because he was the first literary person I ever met. He introduced me into the company of others.
The presence of my sisters made my sojourn in Paris less intolerable, and my taste for letters still further weakened my disgust for the place. Delisle de Sales seemed to me a titan. At his apartment, I met Carbon Flins des Oliviers, who fell in love with Madame de Farcy. She mocked him for it, but he took the thing well, for he prided himself on being good company. Flins introduced me to Fontanes, his friend, who would soon become a friend of mine.
The son of a Warden of Waters and Forests in Reims, Flins had a negligible education; even so, he was a man of wit and sometimes of talent. It would be impossible to see anything fatter than him. He was a short, bloated man with large protruding eyes, bristly hair, dirty teeth, and yet, in spite of all this, a not ignoble bearing. His style of life, which resembled that of almost all Parisian men of letters at the time, merits some description.
Flins occupied an apartment on the rue Mazarine, not far from La Harpe’s apartment on the rue Guénégaud. Two Savoyards, disguised as lackeys by means of livery cloaks, waited on him hand and foot. In the evenings they accompanied him everywhere, and in the mornings they opened the door to all his visitors. Flins went regularly to the Théâtre-Français, which was then in the Odéon and especially known for its comedies. Brizard was coming to the end of his career; Talma was just starting out. Larive, Saint-Phal, Fleury, Molé, Dazincourt, Dugazon, Grandmesnil, Mesdames Contat, Saint-Val, Desgarcins, and Olivier were all at the height of their powers, and waiting in the wings was Mademoiselle Mars, the daughter of Monvel, about to make her debut at the Théâtre Montansier. Actresses looked after their authors then, and were frequently the occasion of their fortune.
Flins, who received only a small allowance from his family, lived on credit. When Parliament was not in session, he would pawn his Savoyards’ livery cloaks, his two watches, his rings, and his linen, pay with the loan what he had to pay, and set off for Reims, where he would stay three months before returning to Paris, redeeming what he had pawned at Mont-de-Piété with the money his father had given him, and resuming the rounds of his life, always cheerful and well received.