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Updated: May 9, 2025
Monsieur Ballanche's face had been frightfully disfigured by an operation, and though his friends thought that his fine eyes and expression redeemed his appearance, he was, to strangers, particularly unprepossessing. He was, moreover, very absent-minded. When he joined Madame Récamier at Rome, she noticed, during an evening walk with him, that he had no hat.
Maybe she realized better than he did the uselessness of his candidature. The enemies he had in the Academy and its entourage were too powerful for his claims to be considered. Many years afterwards, Victor Hugo related that the novelist put himself forward for the vacancy left by Ballanche's death at the end of 1847, and apropos added the following anecdote.
I will give you a sample of it, so you can have an idea of the wit and good taste displayed by these gentlemen. The most intoxicated of the young men asked, between two yawns, who were the authors of Antigone? "Sophocles," said M. de Monbert. "But there are two, are there not?" "Two Antigones?" said the Prince laughing; "yes, there is Ballanche's." "Ah, yes!
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