pictures and statues, rich, happy, and at ease, he watched with a
paternal smile his gloomy creations marching in dismal procession across
the frontiers of France. Byron replied to him in a cry of grief which
made Greece tremble, and hung Manfred over the abyss, as if oblivion were
the solution of the hideous enigma with which he enveloped him.

Pardon, great poets! who are now but ashes and who sleep in peace!
Pardon, ye demigods, for I am only a child who suffers. But while I
write all this I can not but curse you. Why did you not sing of the
perfume of flowers, of the voices of nature, of hope and of love, of the
vine and the sun, of the azure heavens and of beauty? You must have
understood life, you must have suffered; the world was crumbling to
pieces about you; you wept on its ruins and you despaired; your
mistresses were false; your friends calumniated, your compatriots
misunderstood; your heart was empty; death was in your eyes, and you were
the Colossi of grief. But tell me, noble Goethe, was there no more
consoling voice in the religious murmur of your old German forests? You,
for whom beautiful poesy was the sister of science, could not they find
in immortal nature a healing plant for the heart of their favorite? You,
who were a pantheist, and antique poet of Greece, a lover of sacred
forms, could you not put a little honey in the beautiful vases you made;
you who had only to smile and allow the bees to come to your lips? And
thou, Byron, hadst thou not near Ravenna, under the orange-trees of
Italy, under thy beautiful Venetian sky, near thy Adriatic, hadst thou
not thy well-beloved? Oh, God! I who speak to you, who am only a feeble
child, have perhaps known sorrows that you have never suffered, and yet I
believe and hope, and still bless God.

When English and German ideas had passed thus over our heads there ensued
disgust and mournful silence, followed by a terrible convulsion. For to