to draw from them and squeeze out of them all the literature they contained. Tremendously headstrong, he has been known to keep a con- tributor under lock and key until his article was finished. Authors abused him, quarrelled with him, and then came back to him again. A review which had, among many others, as contributors for its first numbers, George Sand, Vigny, Mus- set, Mérimée, may be said to have started well. George Sand tells us that after a battle with the Revue de Paris and the Revue des Deux Mondes, both off which papers wanted her work, she bound herself to the Revue des Deux Mondes, which was to pay her a hundred and sixty pounds a year for thirty-two pages of writing every six weeks. In 1833, the Revue des Deux Mondes published Léila, and on January 1, 1876, it finished publishing the Tour de Percemont. This means an unin- terrupted collaboration, extending over a period of forty-three years. The literary critic of the Revue des Deux Mondes at that time was a man who was very much re- spected and very little liked, or, in other words, he was universally detested. This critic was Gustave Planche. He took his own rôle too seriously, and endeavoured to put authors on their guard about their faults. Authors did not -99- |