About the same time, M. Jules Janin, then at the beginning of his career, finding a copy of the _Meditations_ at a book-store, purchased it out of curiosity. He found to his astonishment, a new style of poetry; that it admirably depicted the sentiments of the soul and passions of the heart, the joys of earth and the ecstasies of heaven, the hopes of the present and apprehensions of the future. He wrote a long review, which served to arouse the attention of the literary and book-reading public and to create a prodigious demand. Forty-five thousand copies were sold in the next four years, and its author was speedily ranked with Byron, Goethe and Chateaubriand, then the distinguished poets of the period. He had originated a new style of poetry.
Meanwhile Lamartine was sadly awaiting events at his modest quarters and fearing for the fate and effects of his little publication. As he was in bed one morning in the first month of spring, the janitor’s daughter, a girl of twelve or fourteen years, opened the door of the room. It was too early for the morning newspaper. Smiling intelligently, she threw on the bed a little billet having an enormous seal of red wax. There was upon it, Lamartine remarks, “an imprint of a coat of arms that ought to be illustrious, for it was undecipherable.”
“Why do you smile so knowingly, Lucy?” he asked, as he broke the seal and tore off the envelope.
“Because,” said she, “mamma told me that the letter had been brought in the early morning by a chasseur all laced with gold, having a beautiful feather in his hat, and that he had urgently desired that the note should be delivered to you as soon as you awoke, because his mistress had told him: ‘Go quickly; we must not delay the joy and perhaps the fortune of the young man.’”
There were two separate epistles. One was written by the Polish Princess T.... She was a sister of the unfortunate Prince Poniatowski who was drowned while directing the retreat at the battle of Leipsic. Lamartine did not know her and the letter was not addressed to him but to M. Alain, his friend and physician. M. Alain had been for six years the physician and friend of M. de Talleyrand, and during Lamartine’s illness he had cared for him like a mother rather than as a medical attendant. He is depicted as being as tender as learned. Lamartine describes him as most true, good, and generous.