"Throughout the last thirty years I have lent sums, large considering my means, to friends, comrades and entire strangers. Never, never, never has a single centime been repaid by a single one of these borrowers. I now vow to myself, never under any circumstances whatever to lend money again!"
Poor song-writers, nevertheless, he posthumously befriended. By his will with the bulk of his property was founded "La petite Caisse des chansonniers," a benefit society for less happy Nadauds to come. By aid of these funds, lyrists and ballad-writers unable to find publishers would be held on their onward path. Full of honours, Nadaud died in 1893, monuments being erected to his memory, streets named after him, and undiminished popularity keeping his name alive.
And the honour denied to Béranger, to Victor Hugo, to Balzac, the coveted sword and braided coat of the Forty were Nadaud's also. With the witty Piron he could not ironically anticipate his own epitaph thus--
"Here lies Nadaud who was nothing, not even an Academician!"
Before taking leave of Carcassonne, poetic and picturesque, the most inveterate anti-sightseer should peep into its museum. For this little _chef-lieu_ of the Aude, with a population under thirty thousand, possesses what, indeed, hardly a French townling lacks, namely, a picture-gallery. If not remarkable from an artistic point of view, the collection serves to demonstrate the persistent, self-denying and constant devotion to culture in France. Times may be peaceful or stormy, seasons may prove disastrous, the withered, thin and blasted ears of corn may devour the seven ears full and golden, the ship of State may be caught in a tornado and lurch alarmingly--all the same "the man in the street," "the rascal many," to quote Spenser, will have a museum in which, with wife and hopefuls, to spend their Sunday afternoons. The local museum is no less of a necessity to Jacques Bonhomme than his daily _pot-au-feu_, that dish of soup which, according to Michelet, engenders the national amiability.
The splendid public library--the determinative is used in the sense of comparison--numbers just upon a volume per head, and the art school, school of music, and other institutions tell the same story. Culture throughout the country seems indigenous, to spread of itself, and, above all things, to reach all classes. Culture on French soil is gratuitous, ever free as air! We must never overlook that primary fact.