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CHAPTER VI

NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Among the national institutions of France, the place of honour must undoubtedly be given to the Académie Française; not because of its utility, still less for the amount of respect and admiration it deserves. My own opinion is, that a more fantastic and ridiculous institution was never invented; and to-day it has no connexion between our democratic times and the monstrous period in which it was founded. Why forty respectable gentlemen who happen to have written books more or less good (and by no means always such as to justify their election), composed tolerable operas, written amusing or instructive plays, as the case may be, should not have been content with the applause and pence of their fellows, but must needs array themselves in an absurd uniform, with triumphant green palm-leaves embroidered over a modern coat, and a toy sword at their side, and play at immortality, is what I have never been able to understand. As if the votes of his