Victor Cherbuliez

Victor Cherbuliez was a Genevan who took French citizenship at fifty and was elected to the Académie française six years later. His novels — cosmopolitan, ironic, full of adventurers passing themselves off as counts — sold across Europe in the Revue des Deux Mondes, where he was also a formidable critic. He wrote as fast as he talked and was thought the wittiest man in Paris.