Honest natures cannot easily break the ties that bind them, especially if they have tied them voluntarily.

The secretary was therefore still living in domestic relations with the poet when Modeste's letter arrived,--in such relations, be it said, as involved a perpetual sacrifice of his feelings.

La Briere admitted the frankness with which Canalis had laid himself bare before him.

Moreover, the defects of the man, who will always be considered a great poet during his lifetime and flattered as Martmontel was flattered, were only the wrong side of his brilliant qualities.

Without his vanity and his magniloquence it is possible that he might never have acquired the sonorous elocution which is so useful and even necessary an instrument in political life.