II. It is very difficult to prove that one is modest, for the very assertion of one's modesty destroys one's claim to it. As I have said, our old Christian teachers had an excellent rule upon this score, which was never to speak of oneself either in praise or depreciation. This is the true principle, but the general reader will not have it so, and is the cause of all the mischief. He leads the writer to commit faults upon which he is afterwards very hard, just as the staid middle classes of another age applauded the actor, and yet excluded him from the Church. "Incur your own damnation, as long as you amuse us" is often the sentiment which lurks beneath the encouragement, often flattering in appearance, of the public. Success is more often than not acquired by our defects. When I am very well pleased with what I have written, I have perhaps nine or ten persons who approve of what I have said. When I cease to keep a strict watch upon myself, when my literary conscience hesitates, and my hand shakes, thousands are anxious for me to go on.
But notwithstanding all this, and making due allowance for venial faults, I may safely claim that I have been modest, and in this respect, at all events, I have not come short of the St. Sulpice standard. I am not afflicted with literary vanity. I do not fall into the error which distinguishes the literary views of our day. I am well assured that no really great man has ever imagined himself to be one, and that those who during their lifetime browse upon their glory while it is green, do not garner it ripe after their death. I only feigned to set store by literature for a time to please M. Sainte-Beuve who had great influence over me. Since his death, I have ceased to attach any value to it. I see plainly enough that talent is only prized because people are so childish. If the public were wise, they would be content with getting the truth. What they like is in most cases imperfections. My adversaries, in order to deny me the possession of other qualities which interfere with their apologeticum, are so profuse in their allowance of talent to me that I need not scruple to accept an encomium which, coming from them, is a criticism. In any event, I have never sought to gain anything by the display of this inferior quality, which has been more prejudicial to me as a _savant_ than it has been useful of itself. I have not based any calculations upon it. I have never counted upon my supposed talent for a livelihood, and I have not in any way tried to turn it to account. The late M. Beulé, who looked upon me with a kind of good-natured curiosity mingled with astonishment, could not understand why I made so little use of it. I have never been at all a literary man. In the most decisive moments of my life I had not the least idea that my prose would secure any success.