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Such is the deplorable end assigned to comets by the author of the "Principia," an end which makes De la Brétonne say to Rétif: "An immense comet, already larger than Jupiter, was again increased in its path by being blended with six other dying comets.
You had Branto'me, you had Tallemant, you had Retif, and a dozen others, to furnish materials for scenes of voluptuousness and of blood that would have outdone even the present naturalistes. You had other metal to work on: you gave us that superstitious and tragical true love of La Moles, that devotion how tender and how pure! of Bussy for the Dame de Montsoreau.
Retif de la Bretonne, in his work upon this subject, gives the accompanying picture of a flying man, furnished with very artistically designed wings, fitting exactly to the shoulders, and carrying a basket of provisions, suspended from his waist; and the frontispiece of the "Philosophic sans Pretention" is a view of a flying-machine.
"Why is it," asked Rétif de la Bretonne, towards the end of the eighteenth century, "that girls who have no morals are more seductive and more loveable than honest women? It is because, like the Greek courtesans to whom grace and voluptuousness were taught, they have studied the art of pleasing.
My first rough manuscript, without any intermediate copy, has been sent to the press. 2. Not a sheet has been seen by any human eyes, excepting those of the author and the printer: the faults and the merits are exclusively my own. I cannot help recollecting a much more extraordinary fact, which is affirmed of himself by Retif de la Bretorme, a voluminous and original writer of French novels.
The press, that giant machine, which incessantly pumps all the intellectual sap of society, belches forth without pause fresh materials for its work. The whole human race is on the scaffoldings. Each mind is a mason. The humblest fills his hole, or places his stone. Retif de le Bretonne brings his hod of plaster. Every day a new course rises.
In his Mémoires, the famous Rétif de la Bretonne paints in the most picturesque manner the patriarchal and authoritative manners of his grandfather who, by virtue of his own unquestioned authority prevented his descendant from leaving his native village and establishing in Paris. Paris was already exercising its fascination and uprooting the youth of the time.
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