My conscience demands it. This excessively forgotten novelist β and to be forgotten so totally is a form of injustice β this journalist, this brave and gallant gentleman, is one whom my brother and I most stupidly underrated. He published over forty volumes in his lifetime, and some of them, like The Trial of the Hindu Thugs, were enormously successful.
He used to say of that particular novel that, published as a serial, it had made the fortune of the daily Petit Journal. He maintained also that it was he who had invented the colored poster at the time when another of his books, The River of Pearls, or the Red Spider, was being advertised. The French Academy awarded a prize to this novel.
He flattered himself that he had saved the city of Dunkerque, and that it was he, moreover, who had first had the idea of using the marine corps to defend Paris in Unfortunately, my brother and I had acquired the reprehensible habit of ridiculing our grandfather. We had agreed once and for all that it would be stupid to believe a single word of the stories he told, thus blinding ourselves to the advantage we might have received from the conversation of a perfectly intelligent, instructive, witty, cultivated, and kindly man.
You may wonder why we had got so firmly into our heads the notion that everything he said was untrue. It must have been because he spoke exactly as he wrote his novels β that is, constantly concerned to awaken interest, hold attention, captivate the listener.
He took up the conversation as he might take up his pen β for a long time; and everything he said began like the first volume of an endless novel expressly intended for popularity. This was our excuse, our sole excuse.
