With Voltaire | Page 5

that's the reason you have so few good ones.
As for us, we have not one; but that is the fault of our language."
"And of the French genius, which considers that a thought when

extended loses all its force."
"And you do not think so?"
"Pardon me, it depends on the kind of thought. A witty saying, for
example, will not make a sonnet; in French or Italian it belongs to the
domain of epigram."
"What Italian poet do you like best?"
"Ariosto; but I cannot say I love him better than the others, for he is my
only love."
"You know the others, though?"
"I think I have read them all, but all their lights pale before Ariosto's.
Fifteen years ago I read all you have written against him, and I said that
you, would retract when you had read his works."
"I am obliged to you for thinking that I had not read them. As a matter
of fact I had done so, but I was young. I knew Italian very imperfectly,
and being prejudiced by the learned Italians who adore Tasso I was
unfortunate enough to publish a criticism of Ariosto which I thought
my own, while it was only the echo of those who had prejudiced me. I
adore your Ariosto!"
"Ah! M. de Voltaire, I breathe again. But be good enough to have the
work in which you turned this great man into ridicule
excommunicated."
"What use would that be? All my books are excommunicated; but I will
give you a good proof of my retractation."
I was astonished! The great man began to recite the two fine passages
from the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth cantos, in which the divine poet
speaks of the conversation of Astolpho with St. John and he did it
without missing a single life or committing the slightest fault against
the laws of prosody. He then pointed out the beauties of the passages

with his natural insight and with a great man's genius. I could not have
had anything better from the lips of the most skilled commentators in
Italy. I listened to him with the greatest attention, hardly daring to
breath, and waiting for him to make a mistake, but I had my trouble for
nothing. I turned to the company crying that I was more than
astonished, and that all Italy should know what I had seen. "And I, sir,"
said the great man, "will let all Europe know of the amends I owe to the
greatest genius our continent has produced."
Greedy of the praise which he deserved so well, Voltaire gave me the
next day his translation which Ariosto begins thus:
"Quindi avvien the tra principi a signori."
At the end of the recitation which gained the applause of all who heard
it, although not one of them knew Italian, Madame Denis, his niece,
asked me if I thought the passage her uncle had just recited one of the
finest the poet had written.
"Yes, but not the finest."
"It ought to be; for without it Signor Lodovico would not have gained
his apotheosis."
"He has been canonised, then? I was not aware of that."
At these words the laugh, headed by Voltaire, went for Madame Denis.
Everybody laughed except myself, and I continued to look perfectly
serious.
Voltaire was vexed at not seeing me laugh like the rest, and asked me
the reason.
"Are you thinking," said he, "of some more than human passage?"
"Yes," I answered.
"What passage is that?"

"The last thirty-six stanzas of the twenty-third canto, where the poet
describes in detail how Roland became mad. Since the world has
existed no one has discovered the springs of madness, unless Ariosto
himself, who became mad in his old age. These stanzas are terrible, and
I am sure they must have made you tremble."
"Yes, I remember they render love dreadful. I long to read them again."
"Perhaps the gentleman will be good enough to recite them," said
Madame Denis, with a side-glance at her uncle.
"Willingly," said I, "if you will have the goodness to listen to me."
"You have learn them by heart, then, have you?" said Voltaire.
"Yes, it was a pleasure and no trouble. Since I was sixteen, I have read
over Ariosto two or three times every year; it is my passion, and the
lines naturally become linked in my memory without my having given
myself any pains to learn them. I know it all, except his long
genealogies and his historical tirades, which fatigue the mind and do
not touch the heart. It is only Horace that I know throughout, in spite of
the often prosaic style of his epistles, which are certainly far from
equalling Boileau's."
"Boileau is often too lengthy; I admire Horace, but as for Ariosto, with