" It's the most preposterous thing I ever experienced. It is
curiously pleasant. You have enjoyed it all your life, and
therefore cannot conceive how bewildering a burst of it is for the
first time at forty-nine.' And this late sunshine of popularity
still further softened him. He was a bit of a porcupine to the
last, still shedding darts; or rather he was to the end a bit of a
schoolboy, and must still throw stones, but the essential
toleration that underlay his disputatiousness, and the kindness
that made of him a tender sicknurse and a generous helper, shone
more conspicuously through. A new pleasure had come to him; and as
with all sound natures, he was bettered by the pleasure.
I can best show Fleeming in this later stage by quoting from a
vivid and interesting letter of M. Emile Trelat's. Here, admirably
expressed, is how he appeared to a friend of another nation, whom
he encountered only late in life. M. Trelat will pardon me if I
correct, even before I quote him; but what the Frenchman supposed
to flow from some particular bitterness against France, was only
Fleeming's usual address.
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