year.

PAUL HERVIEU
de l'Academe Francaise.




LETTER FROM JULES CLARETIE TO THE AUTHOR

MY DEAR FRIEND:

I have often declared that I never would write prefaces! But how can one
resist a fine fellow who brings one an attractive manuscript, signed with
a name popular among all his friends, who asks of one, in the most
engaging way, an opinion on the same--then a word, a simple word of
introduction, like a signal to saddle?

I have read your Zibeline, my dear friend, and this romance--your first--
has given me a very keen pleasure. You told me once that you felt a
certain timidity in publishing it. Reassure yourself immediately. A man
can not be regarded as a novice when he has known, as you have, all the
Parisian literary world so long; or rather, perhaps, I may more
accurately say, he is always a novice when he tastes for the first time
the intoxication of printer's ink.

You have the quickest of wits and the least possible affectation of
gravity, and you have made as well known in Mexico as in Paris your
couplets on the end of the Mexican conflict with France. 'Tout Mexico y
passera!' Where are they, the 'tol-de-rols' of autumn?