Explore "The Parisians, Book XI" by Edward Bulwer-lytton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On leaving Lemercier and De Breze, Savarin regained the Boulevard, and pausing every now and then to exchange a few words with acquaintances -- the acquaintances of the genial author were numerous -- turned into the _quartier_ Chaussee d'Antin, and gaining a small neat house, with a richly-ornamented _facade_, mounted very clean, well-kept stairs to a third story. On one of the doors on the landing-place was nailed a card, inscribed, "Gustave Rameau, _homme de lettres_. " Certainly it is not usual in Paris thus to _afficher_ one's self as a "man of letters"? But Genius scorns what is usual. Had not Victor Hugo left in the hotel-books on the Rhine his designation "homme de lettres"? Did not the heir to one of the loftiest houses in the peerage of England, and who was also a first-rate amateur in painting, inscribe on his studio when in Italy, " -- _artiste_"?
Such examples, no doubt, were familiar to Gustave Rameau, and "_homme de lettres_" was on the scrap of pasteboard nailed to his door.