travel books: ad inspired me with the same sentiments and ambitions that the English Parliament inspires in the students of Oxford and Cambridge. To be chosen by one's elders and one's peers to sit in the company to which Corneille and Racine, Voltaire and Victor Hugo, Taine and Renan had belonged, seemed to me a consummation devoutly to be wished. But at the time when I received Barthou's letter I had published only a few books which were not of sufficient importance to justify my being chosen. I replied that there were a number of very talented writers who had the indisputable right to be admitted before me, and despite his insistence I persisted in my refusal. Eight years later Paul Valery asked me: `You or Mauriac?' I replied: 'Mauriac,' and to my great joy Fran~ois Mauriac, who had a much greater title and a much greater chance than I, was elected. I had great affection and esteem for him, sentiments which in the course of fifteen years have constantly increased. At the time when I began my career in the literary world certain people took pleasure in opposing us to each other. Base minds believe they see baseness everywhere, and some sought in Mauriac and in me ground favourable for the cultivation of jealousy. They failed. At first we studied each other with the anxiety one feels before the unknown, then a friendship sprang up, soon to be reinforced by that of our children. Mauriac spent some weeks with us at Essendieras during the autumn of 1934 and in the course of our walks we had long and intimate conversations. After Mauriac, many of my friends had been elected to the French Academy. Then in i936 Monsieur Doumic for the first time said to me: `Your turn has come.' I listened to the Sirens and for some weeks I thought, to my great surprise, that I, although I was neither a Marshal nor a Cardinal nor dying, was going to be successful in this first candidacy, which would have been contrary to the wise traditions of the institution. But Joseph de Pesquidoux, a good regional writer and an old contributor to the Revue, presented himself against me and Monsieur Doumic abandoned me, which immediately spelled my doom. When I next saw him he said to me, stroking his beard: `Don't complain ... Victor Hugo had three defeats ... Besides, out of thirty-one votes you got eleven ...'I'hat's a good trial gallop.' This was the traditional consolation. books

Books > Old Books > Call No Man Happy (1943)

Page 217

THE CAPITOL

ad inspired me with the same sentiments and ambitions that the English Parliament inspires in the students of Oxford and Cambridge. To be chosen by one's elders and one's peers to sit in the company to which Corneille and Racine, Voltaire and Victor Hugo, Taine and Renan had belonged, seemed to me a consummation devoutly to be wished. But at the time when I received Barthou's letter I had published only a few books which were not of sufficient importance to justify my being chosen. I replied that there were a number of very talented writers who had the indisputable right to be admitted before me, and despite his insistence I persisted in my refusal. Eight years later Paul Valery asked me: `You or Mauriac?' I replied: 'Mauriac,' and to my great joy Fran~ois Mauriac, who had a much greater title and a much greater chance than I, was elected.
I had great affection and esteem for him, sentiments which in the course of fifteen years have constantly increased. At the time when I began my career in the literary world certain people took pleasure in opposing us to each other. Base minds believe they see baseness everywhere, and some sought in Mauriac and in me ground favourable for the cultivation of jealousy. They failed. At first we studied each other with the anxiety one feels before the unknown, then a friendship sprang up, soon to be reinforced by that of our children. Mauriac spent some weeks with us at Essendieras during the autumn of 1934 and in the course of our walks we had long and intimate conversations. After Mauriac, many of my friends had been elected to the French Academy. Then in i936 Monsieur Doumic for the first time said to me:
`Your turn has come.'
I listened to the Sirens and for some weeks I thought, to my great surprise, that I, although I was neither a Marshal nor a Cardinal nor dying, was going to be successful in this first candidacy, which would have been contrary to the wise traditions of the institution. But Joseph de Pesquidoux, a good regional writer and an old contributor to the Revue, presented himself against me and Monsieur Doumic abandoned me, which immediately spelled my doom. When I next saw him he said to me, stroking his beard:
`Don't complain ... Victor Hugo had three defeats ... Besides, out of thirty-one votes you got eleven ...'I'hat's a good trial gallop.'
This was the traditional consolation.