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time to think of the French Academy, whence, in any case, his free unorthodox opinions would certainly have excluded him.

      VI. Regnard, the best French comedy writer after Molière, was too much occupied with his own work and with amusing himself to dream of joining the French Academy, where, moreover, by reason of his loose life, he had but little chance of being elected.

      VII. J. B. Rousseau, who in the days before André Chénier, Béranger, Victor Hugo, and Alfred de Musset was justly regarded as the first lyric poet of France, did not belong to the Academy. He left Paris, it is true, for some scandalous verses attributed to him, but which he was never proved to have written; and he died in exile.

      VIII. Vauvenargues – always to be remembered by the finest of his many fine thoughts, “les grandes pensées viennent du cœur” – died young, so that the Academy may be said not to have had time to elect him.

      IX. Lesage, author of “Gil Blas” and of several comedies, married the daughter of a carpenter, which might well have told against his election. But his exclusion from the Academy is generally attributed to his having failed to write a tragedy.

      X. The Abbé Prévost, author of “Manon Lescaut,” was not a member of the Academy; and it is quite possible that the fact of his having written “Manon Lescaut” may have kept him out.

      XI. Piron, already mentioned as the author of a famous epigram against the Academy, was really elected to it. But to be valid, the election had to be confirmed by the sovereign, and Louis XV. would not ratify the Academy’s choice. “What are the emoluments of the place?” asked the king; and being told that an academician received, by way of honorarium, one thousand francs annually, he assigned to Piron a pension for that amount.

      XII. Jean Jacques Rousseau was never asked to join the Academy, nor did he ever show any wish to belong to it.

      XIII. Diderot was naturally not an academician.

      XIV. Mably, the learned and vigorous publicist, who, before socialism had been formulated into a creed, put forth socialistic views, replied to many persons who urged him to become a candidate for academical honours: “If I were a member of the Academy people would perhaps say, ‘Why does he belong to it?’ I would rather hear them say, ‘Why does he not belong to it?’”

      XV. The poet, André Chénier, one of the victims of the Revolution, was never a member of the French Academy; nor was Mirabeau (XVI.), nor Camille Desmoulins (XVII.).

      XVIII. Beaumarchais not only wrote brilliant comedies, but took part in all kinds of speculations, some of them hazardous; and it may be for this reason, but possibly also because he was looked upon as only a playwright, that he was never asked to join the Academy. Neither Chamfort (XIX.) nor Rivarol (XX.) were Academicians. Lamennais, who, from the infallibility of the Pope passed to the infallibility of the people, was never a member of the Academy.

      Women are not admitted to the Academy, or Mme. de Lefayette, Mme. Dacier, Mme. Cotin, Mme. de Stael, perhaps even the most illustrious of them all, George Sand, might have been academicians. Scarcely, however, George Sand.

      In ancient days a dramatist seems to have had no chance of being elected to the Academy unless he had produced tragedies. Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, were all academicians, whereas Molière, Regnard, and Lesage were all excluded. The modern Academy has shown itself less prejudiced. Scribe was a member of the Academy, and so is Labiche, who, in a smaller way, may be regarded as the Molière of our time.

      Suppressed, as too aristocratic, under the Revolution, the Academy came to life again as a literary branch of the Institute, and under the First Empire resumed a more independent existence in something like its old historic form. Since its revival it has traversed the Empire, the Restoration, the reign of Louis Philippe, the Republic of 1848, and the Second Empire. Finding itself sufficiently in accord with the three first governments, and tolerating the Republic of 1848, the Academy objected, it would seem, to the Second Empire; in proof of which it need only be mentioned that not one of Napoleon III.’s political men was ever admitted to the Academy. This literary society has now had time enough to get accustomed to the Third Republic, which has lasted in France longer than any governmental system since the downfall of the ancient Monarchy.

      The Academy has plenty of funds at its disposal, arising from donations made to it at one time or another, and it receives annually from the state a sum of 85,000 francs. It awards prizes for eloquence and prizes for poetry; prizes for virtue (the celebrated “priz Monthyon”) and prizes for the best work of fiction, regarded from a literary, artistic, and moral point of view. This prize was adjudged to M. Alphonse Daudet for his “Fromont jeune et Risler ainé,” of which the moral tendency would not, perhaps, be obvious to everyone, though as a rule the works crowned by the Academy are such as a careful girl might safely allow her own mother to read. A prize of 20,000 francs was voted to M. Thiers for his “History of the Consulate and of the Empire,” but the money was returned by the grateful historian on the understanding that the interest it produced should be given annually as a prize for the best essay on some historical subject. A prize of 4,800 francs, founded by Dr. Toirac, is given annually for the best comedy in verse or prose played during the previous year at the Théâtre Français; and M. Louis Langlois, a famous writer of Latin elegiacs, has founded an annual prize of 1,500 francs for the best translation in verse or prose of a Greek, Latin, or other foreign work.

      CHAPTER XIII.

      THE PANTHÉON

The Church of Clovis – The Church of Sainte-Geneviève – France in the Thirteenth Century – The Building of the New Church under Louis XV. – Mirabeau and the Constituent Assembly – The Church of Sainte-Geneviève becomes the Panthéon

      THE College of France and the Sorbonne stand close together at the corner of the Rue Saint-Jacques and the Rue des Écoles; and between the College of France and the new Sorbonne, on the right, stands the Lyceum of Louis the Great (Lycée Louis le Grand), formerly a Jesuit college, founded by the order in 1550 in the Hôtel de Clermont; the property of Cardinal de Praat in virtue of letters patent which the Parliament of Paris declined to register until some dozen years after they had been issued. Expelled from Paris after the attempt made by Jean Châtel on the person of Henry IV., the Jesuits did not again obtain permission to teach until 1618. Amongst their celebrated pupils were some who might well be suspected of having been educated elsewhere – Molière, for instance, and Voltaire.

      Originally known as the College of Clermont, this institution became, in virtue of letters patent, a royal foundation in 1662, when it received the name of Louis the Great. It was afterwards, in 1753, connected with the university. Here, indeed, until the time of the Revolution, the assemblies of the university were held, as well as those of the “four nations” included in it. The Revolution brought the Lyceum, with its monarchical name, to an end; but it was revived at the time of the Revolution, when it was once more called “Collège Louis le Grand.” Public institutions, however, like streets, ships, and theatres, change their names in France with each new form of government. The Lycée Louis le Grand was called, under the Republic, the Consulate, and the Empire, the Collège de l’Égalité; and under the Republic of 1848, when M. Carnot was Minister of Public Instruction, Collège Descartes.

      A few more steps, and from the point where the Rue Saint-Jacques is intersected by the Rue Soufflet, may be perceived the Panthéon, the name given to the imposing edifice which under monarchical governments has always been known as the Church of Sainte-Geneviève.

      On the site of the Panthéon stood originally a church dedicated by Clovis to the Holy Apostles. It was destroyed by the Normans in one of their incursions, and replaced soon afterwards by the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève. The bell which tolled in this once-celebrated edifice hangs to-day in the Lycée Corneille.

      For a number of centuries the Church of Sainte-Geneviève seems to have had an uneventful history. Dulaure, however, in that strange book, “Les Singularités Historiques,” gives some remarkable details in regard to the life led and the actions performed by the clergy attached to Saint-Geneviève, and indeed by the French clergy generally.

      Under the reign of Louis VII., styled the Young, Pope Eugène III., says this writer, driven out of Rome, came in 1145 to Paris, and a few days after his arrival wished

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