And so is Pompadour;
’Tis but a transient thing,
For both are cured;
The good God who aids
Our wishes and our love,
For the welfare of the world
Restores to us the day
With Pompadour.
[55]
You are too dear to France,
To the god of arts and loves,
To fear the deadly power of fate.
All the gods watched over your life,
All were animated by the zeal that inspires me;
In flying to your rescue
They have established their empire.
[56] Bossuet. Sermon on Final Impenitence.
[57] Room No. 116 of the _Notice du Musée_, by M. Eudore Soulié.
[58] No. 122 of the _Notice_.
[59]
These lines, traced by a hand divine,
Cannot but cause me trouble and embarrassment.
’Twere too much daring should my heart divine them;
’Twere too ungrateful not to guess them.
[60]
One should not be old except in Sparta,
Say the ancient writings.
Great God! how far I am out of the way,
Who am so old in Paris.
O Sparta! O Sparta! alas! what has become of you?
You knew the full value of a hoary head.
The more one muffled up in dog-days,
The more the ear was deaf and dim the eye,
The more nonsense one talked in his sad family,
The more one criticised the veriest trifle,
The more gout and similar titbits one possessed,
The more teeth one had lost by their good will,
The more one stooped over his heavy crutch,
The more fit, in fact, one was to be buried,
The more within its ramparts one was honored.
O Sparta! O Sparta! alas! what has become of you?
Yon knew the full value of a hoary head.
[61]
Accumulated years have pushed me to extremity.
I cannot longer, alas! find Sparta everywhere,
But you, the model of queens,
Assuredly should find Athens everywhere.
[62] _Mesdames de France, filles de Louis XV._, by Édouard de
Barthélemy. Didier.
[63] _Louis XV. et sa famille_, after unpublished letters and
documents, by Honoré Bonhomme. 1 Vol., Dentu.
[64] No. 122 of _Notice du Musée de Versailles_, by M. Eudore
Soulié.
Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been
corrected silently.
2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the
original.
3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have
been retained as in the original.
4. Italics are shown as _xxx_.
5. Bold script is shown as =xxx=.