hall-porter of the Théâtre-Français had his orders. They would
have been received with their own brooms.

I am mistaken, however, in saying that I did not know
Shakespeare. I knew him as everybody else did, not having read
him, and having treated him with ridicule. My childhood began,
as everybody's childhood begins, with prejudices. Man finds
prejudices beside his cradle, puts them from him a little in the
course of his career, and often, alas! takes to them again in
his old age.

During this journey in 1825 Charles Nodier and I passed our time
recounting to each other the Gothic tales and romances that have
taken root in Rheims. Our memories and sometimes our
imaginations, clubbed together. Each of us furnished his
legend. Rheims is one of the most impossible towns in the
geography of story. Pagan lords have lived there, one of whom
gave as a dower to his daughter the strips of land in
Borysthenes called the "race-courses of Achilles." The Duke de
Guyenne, in the fabliaux, passes through Rheims on his way to
besiege Babylon; Babylon, moreover, which is very worthy of
Rheims, is the capital of the Admiral Gaudissius. It is at
Rheims that the deputation sent by the Locri Ozolae to
Apollonius of Tyana, "high priest of Bellona," "disembarks."
While discussing this disembarkation we argued concerning the
Locri Ozolae. These people, according to Nodier, were called
the Fetidae because they were half monkeys; according to myself,
because they inhabited the marshes of Phocis. We reconstructed
on the spot the tradition of St. Remigius and his adventures
with the fairy Mazelane. The Champagne country is rich in