Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, though nobly born, was poor. His health was frail. He did not receive a good education in his youth. Indeed, he was still in his youth when he went to the wars. His culture always remained narrow. He did not know Greek and Latin, when to know Greek and Latin was, as it were, the whole of scholarship. To crown his accidental disqualifications for literary work, he fell a victim to the small-pox, which left him wrecked in body. This occurred almost immediately after he abandoned a military career which had been fruitful to him of hardship, but not of promotion. In spite of all that was thus against him, Vauvenargues, in those years, few and evil, that were his, thought finely and justly enough to earn for himself a lasting place in the literary history of his nation. He was in the eighteenth century of France, without being of it. You have to separate him in thought from the infidels and the "philosophers" of his time. He belongs in spirit to an earlier age. His moral and intellectual kindred was with such as Pascal, far more than with such as Voltaire. Vauvenargues is, however, a writer for the few, instead of for the many. His fame is high, but it is not wide. Historically, he forms a stepping-stone of transition to a somewhat similar nineteenth-century name, that of Joubert. A very few sentences of his will suffice to indicate to our readers the quality of Vauvenargues. Self-evidently, the following antithesis drawn by him between Corneille and Racine is subtly and ingeniously thought, as well as very happily expressed—this, whatever may be considered to be its aptness in point of literary appreciation:—
Corneille's heroes often say great things without inspiring them; Racine's inspire them without saying them.
Here is a good saying:—
It is a great sign of mediocrity always to be moderate in praising.
There is worldly wisdom also here:—
He who knows how to turn his prodigalities to good account, practises a large and noble economy.
Virgil's "They are able, because they seem to themselves to be able," is recalled by this:—
The consciousness of our strength makes our strength greater.
So much for Vauvenargues.
VI.
LA FONTAINE.
1621-1695
La Fontaine enjoys a unique fame. He has absolutely "no fellow in the firmament" of literature. He is the only fabulist, of any age or any nation, that, on the score simply of his fables, is admitted to be poet as well as fabulist. There is perhaps no other literary name whatever among the French, by long proof more secure, than is La Fontaine's, of universal and of immortal renown. Such a fame is, of course, not the most resplendent in the world; but to have been the first, and to remain thus far the only, writer of fables enjoying recognition as true poetry,—this surely is an achievement entitling La Fontaine to monumental mention in any sketch, however summary, of French literature.
Jean de La Fontaine was humbly born, at Château-Thierry in Champagne. His early education was sadly neglected. At twenty years of age he was still phenomenally ignorant. About this time, being now better situated, he developed a taste for the classics and for poetry. With La Fontaine the man, it is the sadly familiar French story of debauched manners in life and in literary production. We cannot acquit him, but we are to condemn him only in common with the most of his age and of his nation. As the world goes, La Fontaine was a "good fellow," never lacking friends. These were held fast in loyalty to the poet, not so much by any sterling worth of character felt in him, as by an exhaustless, easy-going good-nature, that, despite his social insipidity, made La Fontaine the most acceptable of every-day companions. It would be easy to repeat many stories illustrative of this personal quality in La Fontaine, while to tell a single story illustrative of any lofty trait in his character would he perhaps impossible. Still, La Fontaine seemed not ungrateful for the benefits he received from others; and gratitude, no commonplace virtue, let us accordingly reckon to the credit of a man in general so slenderly equipped with positive claims to admiring personal regard. The mirror of bonhomie (easy-hearted good-fellowship), he always was. Indeed, that significant, almost untranslatable, French word might have been coined to fit La Fontaine's case. On his amiable side—a full hemisphere or more of the man—it sums him up completely. Twenty years long, this mirror of bonhomie was domiciliated, like a pet animal, under the hospitable roof of the celebrated Madame de la Sablière. There was truth as well as humor implied in what she said one day: "I have sent away all my domestics; I have kept only my dog, my cat, and La Fontaine."
But La Fontaine had that in him which kept the friendship of serious men. Molière, a grave, even melancholy spirit, however gay in his comedies; Boileau and Racine, decorous both of them, at least in manners,—constituted, together with La Fontaine, a kind of private "Academy," existing on a diminutive scale, which was not without its important influence on French letters. La Fontaine seems to have been a sort of Goldsmith in this club of wits, the butt of many pleasantries from his colleagues, called out by his habit of absent-mindedness. St. Augustine was one night the subject of an elaborate eulogy, which La Fontaine lost the benefit of, through a reverie of his own indulged meantime on a quite different character. Catching, however, at the name, La Fontaine, as he came to himself for a moment, betrayed the secret of his absent thoughts by asking, "Do you think St. Augustine had as much wit as Rabelais?"—"Take care, Monsieur La Fontaine: you have put one of your stockings on wrong side out,"—he had actually done so,—was the only answer vouchsafed to his question. The speaker in this case was a doctor of the Sorbonne (brother to Boileau), present as guest. The story is told of La Fontaine, that egged on to groundless jealousy of his wife,—a wife whom he never really loved, and whom he soon would finally abandon,—he challenged a military friend of his to combat with swords. The friend was amazed, and, amazed, reluctantly fought with La Fontaine, whom he easily put at his mercy. "Now, what is this for?" he demanded. "The public says you visit my house for my wife's sake, not for mine," said La Fontaine. "Then I never will come again." "Far from it," responds La Fontaine, seizing his friend's hand. "I have satisfied the public. Now you must come to my house every day, or I will fight you again." The two went back in company, and breakfasted together in mutual good humor.
A trait or two more, and there will have been enough of the man La Fontaine. It is said that when, on the death of Madame de la Sablière, La Fontaine was homeless, he was met on the street by a friend, who exclaimed, "I was looking for you; come to my house, and live with me!" "I was on the way there," La Fontaine characteristically replied. At seventy, La Fontaine went through a process of "conversion," so called, in which he professed repentance of his sins. On the genuineness of this inward experience of La Fontaine, it is not for a fellow-creature of his, especially at this distance of time, to pronounce. When he died, at seventy-three, Fénelon could say of him (in Latin), "La Fontaine is no more! He is no more; and with him have gone the playful jokes, the merry laugh, the artless graces, and the sweet Muses!"
La Fontaine's earliest works were Contes, so styled; that is, stories, tales, or romances. These are in character such that the subsequent happy change in manners, if not in morals, has made them unreadable,—for their indecency. We need concern ourselves only with the Fables, for it is on these that La Fontaine's fame securely rests. The basis of story in them was not generally original with La Fontaine. He took whatever fittest came to his hand. With much modesty, he attributed all to Æsop and Phædrus. But invention of his own is not altogether wanting to his books of fables. Still, it is chiefly the consummate artful artlessness of the form that constitutes the individual merit of La Fontaine's productions. With something, too, of the air of real poetry, he has undoubtedly invested his verse.
We give, first, the brief fable which is said to have been the prime favorite of the author himself. It is the fable of "The Oak and the Reed." Of this fable, French critics have not scrupled to speak in terms of almost the very highest praise. Chamfort says, "Let one consider, that, within the limit of thirty lines, La Fontaine, doing nothing but yield himself to the current of his story, has taken on every tone, that of poetry the most graceful, that of poetry the most lofty, and one will not hesitate to affirm, that, at the epoch at which this fable appeared, there was nothing comparable to it in the French language." There are, to speak precisely, thirty-two lines in the fable. In this one case, let us try representing La Fontaine's compression by our English form. For the rest of our specimens, we shall use Elizur Wright's translation,—a meritorious one, still master of the field which, near fifty years ago, it entered as pioneer. Mr. Wright here expands La Fontaine's thirty-two verses to forty-four. The additions are not ungraceful, but they encumber somewhat the Attic neatness and simplicity of the original. We ought to say, that La Fontaine boldly broke with the tradition which had been making Alexandrines—lines of six feet—obligatory in French verse. He rhymes irregularly, at choice, and makes his verses long or short, as pleases him. The closing verse of the present piece is, in accordance with the intended majesty of the representation, an Alexandrine.
The Oak one day said to the Reed,
"Justly might you dame Nature blame:
A wren's weight would bow down your frame;
The lightest wind that chance may make
Dimple the surface of the lake
Your head bends low indeed,
The while, like Caucasus, my front
To meet the branding sun is wont,
Nay, more, to take the tempest's brunt.
A blast you feel, I feel a breeze.
Had you been born beneath my roof,
Wide-spread, of leafage weather-proof,
Less had you known your life to tease;
I should have sheltered you from storm.
But oftenest you rear your form
On the moist limits of the realm of wind.
Nature, methinks, against you sore has sinned."
"Your pity," answers him the Heed,
"Bespeaks you kind; but spare your pain;
I more than you may winds disdain.
I bend, and break not. You, indeed,
Against their dreadful strokes till now
Have stood, nor tamed your back to bow:
But wait we for the end."
Scarce had he spoke,
When fiercely from the far horizon broke
The wildest of the children, fullest fraught
With terror, that till then the North had brought.
The tree holds good; the reed it bends.
The wind redoubled might expends,
And so well works that from his bed
Him it uproots who nigh to heaven his head
Held, and whose feet reached to the kingdom of the dead.
In the fable of the "Rat retired from the World," La Fontaine rallies the monks. "With French finesse, he hits his mark by expressly avoiding it. "What think you I mean by my disobliging rat? A monk? No, but a Mahometan devotee; I take it for granted that a monk is always ready with his help to the needy!"
The sage Levantines have a tale
About a rat that weary grew
Of all the cares which life assail,
And to a Holland cheese withdrew.
His solitude was there profound,
Extending through his world so round.
Our hermit lived on that within;
And soon his industry had been
With claws and teeth so good,
That in his novel heritage,
He had in store for wants of age,
Both house and livelihood.
What more could any rat desire?
He grew fat, fair, and round.
God's blessings thus redound
To those who in his vows retire.
One day this personage devout,
Whose kindness none might doubt,
Was asked, by certain delegates
That came from Rat United States,
For some small aid, for they
To foreign parts were on their way,
For succor in the great cat-war:
Ratopolis beleaguered sore,
Their whole republic drained and poor,
No morsel in their scrips they bore.
Slight boon they craved, of succor sure
In days at utmost three or four.
"My friends," the hermit said,
"To worldly things I'm dead.
How can a poor recluse
To such a mission be of use?
What can he do but pray
That God will aid it on its way?
And so, my friends, it is my prayer
That God will have you in his care."
His well-fed saintship said no more,
But in their faces shut the door.
What think you, reader, is the service,
For which I use this niggard rat?
To paint a monk? No, but a dervise.
A monk, I think, however fat,
Must be more bountiful than that.
The fable entitled "Death and the Dying" is much admired for its union of pathos with wit. "The Two Doves" is another of La Fontaine's more tender inspirations. "The Mogul's Dream" is a somewhat ambitious flight of the fabulist's muse. On the whole, however, the masterpiece among the fables of La Fontaine is that of "The Animals Sick of the Plague." Such at least is the opinion of critics in general. The idea of this fable is not original with La Fontaine. The homilists of the middle ages used a similar fiction to enforce on priests the duty of impartiality in administering the sacrament, so called, of confession. We give this famous fable as our closing specimen of La Fontaine:—
The sorest ill that Heaven hath
Sent oil this lower world in wrath,—
The plague (to call it by its name),
One single day of which
Would Pluto's ferryman enrich,
Waged war on beasts, both wild and tame.
They died not all, but all were sick:
No hunting now, by force or trick,
To save what might so soon expire.
No food excited their desire:
Nor wolf nor fox now watched to slay
The innocent and tender prey.
The turtles fled,
So love and therefore joy were dead.
The lion council held, and said,
"My friends, I do believe
This awful scourge for which we grieve,
Is for our sins a punishment
Most righteously by Heaven sent.
Let us our guiltiest beast resign,
A sacrifice to wrath divine.
Perhaps this offering, truly small,
May gain the life and health of all.
By history we find it noted
That lives have been just so devoted.
Then let us all turn eyes within,
And ferret out the hidden sin.
Himself, let no one spare nor flatter,
But make clean conscience in the matter.
For me, my appetite has played the glutton
Too much and often upon mutton.
What harm had e'er my victims done?
I answer, truly, None.
Perhaps, sometimes, by hunger pressed,
I've eat the shepherd with the rest.
I yield myself if need there be;
And yet I think, in equity,
Each should confess his sins with me;
For laws of right and justice cry,
The guiltiest alone should die."
"Sire," said the fox, "your majesty
Is humbler than a king should be,
And over-squeamish in the case.
What! eating stupid sheep a crime?
No, never, sire, at any time.
It rather was an act of grace,
A mark of honor to their race.
And as to shepherds, one may swear,
The fate your majesty describes,
Is recompense less full than fair
For such usurpers o'er our tribes."
Thus Renard glibly spoke,
And loud applause from listeners broke.
Of neither tiger, boar, nor bear,
Did any keen inquirer dare
To ask for crimes of high degree;
The fighters, biters, scratchers, all
From every mortal sin were free;
The very dogs, both great and small,
Were saints, as far as dogs could be.
The ass, confessing in his turn,
Thus spoke in tones of deep concern:
"I happened through a mead to pass;
The monks, its owners, were at mass:
Keen hunger, leisure, tender grass,
And, add to these the devil, too,
All tempted me the deed to do.
I browsed the bigness of my tongue:
Since truth must out, I own it wrong."
On this, a hue and cry arose,
As if the beasts were all his foes.
A wolf, haranguing lawyer-wise,
Denounced the ass for sacrifice,—
The bald-pate, scabby, ragged lout,
By whom the plague had come, no doubt.
His fault was judged a hanging crime.
What! eat another's grass? Oh, shame!
The noose of rope, and death sublime,
For that offence were all too tame!
And soon poor Grizzle felt the same.
Thus human courts acquit the strong,
And doom the weak, as therefore wrong.
It is suitable to add, in conclusion, that La Fontaine is a crucial author for disclosing the irreconcilable difference that exists, at bottom, between the Englishman's and the Frenchman's idea of poetry. No English-speaker, heir of Shakspeare and Milton, will ever be able to satisfy a Frenchman with admiration such as he can conscientiously profess for the poetry of La Fontaine.
VII.
MOLIÈRE.
1623-1673
Molière is confessedly the greatest writer of comedy in the world. Greek Menander might have disputed the palm; but Menander's works have perished, and his greatness must be guessed. Who knows but we guess him too great? Molière's works survive, and his greatness may be measured.
We have stinted our praise. Molière is not only; the foremost name in a certain department of literature; he is one of the foremost names in literature. The names are few on which critics are willing to bestow this distinction. But critics generally agree in bestowing this distinction on Molière.
Molière's comedy is by no means mere farce. Farces he wrote, undoubtedly; and some element of farce, perhaps, entered to qualify nearly every comedy that flowed from his pen. But it is not for his farce that Molière is rated one of the few greatest producers of literature. Molière's comedy constitutes to Molière the patent that it does of high degree in genius, not because it provokes laughter, but because, amid laughter provoked, it not seldom reveals, as if with flashes of lightning,—lightning playful, indeed, but lightning that might have been deadly,—the "secrets of the nethermost abyss" of human nature. Not human manners merely, those of a time, or of a race, but human attributes, those of all times, and of all races, are the things with which, in his higher comedies, Molière deals. Some transient whim of fashion may in these supply to him the mould of form that he uses, but it is human nature itself that supplies to Molière the substance of his dramatic creations. Now and again, if you read Molière wisely and deeply, you find your laughter at comedy fairly frozen in your throat, by a gelid horror seizing you, to feel that these follies or these crimes displayed belong to that human nature, one and the same everywhere and always, of which also you yourself partake. Comedy, Dante, too, called his poem, which included the "Inferno." And a Dantesque quality, not of method, but of power, is to be felt in Molière.
This character in Molière the writer, accords with the character of the man Molière. It might not have seemed natural to say of Molière, as was said of Dante, "There goes the man that has been in hell." But Molière was melancholy enough in temper and in mien to have well inspired an exclamation such as, 'There goes the man that has seen the human heart.'
A poet as well as a dramatist, his own fellow-countrymen, at least, feel Molière to be. In Victor Hugo's list of the eight greatest poets of all time, two are Hebrews (Job and Isaiah), two Greeks (Homer and Æschylus), one is a Roman (Lucretius), one an Italian (Dante), one an Englishman (Shakspeare),—seven. The eighth could hardly fail to be a Frenchman, and that Frenchman is Molière. Mr. Swinburne might perhaps make the list nine, but he would certainly include Victor Hugo himself.
Curiously enough, Molière is not this great writer's real name. It is a stage name. It was assumed by the bearer when he was about twenty-four years of age, on occasion of his becoming one in a strolling band of players,—in 1646 or thereabout. This band, originally composed of amateurs, developed into a professional dramatic company, which passed through various transformations, until, from being at first grandiloquently self-styled, L'Illustre Théâtre, it was, twenty years after, recognized by the national title of Théâtre Français. Molière's real name was Jean Baptiste Poquelin.
Young Poquelin's bent, early encouraged by seeing plays and ballets, was strongly toward the stage. The drama, under the quickening patronage of Louis XIII.'s lordly minister, Cardinal Richelieu, was a great public interest of those times in Paris. Molière's evil star, too, it was perhaps in part that brought him back to Paris, from Orleans. He admired a certain actress in the capital. She became the companion—probably not innocent companion—of his wandering life as actor. A sister of this actress—a sister young enough to be daughter, instead of sister—Molière finally married. She led her jealous husband a wretched conjugal life. A peculiarly dark tradition of shame, connected with Molière's marriage, has lately been to a good degree dispelled. But it is not possible to redeem this great man's fame to chastity and honor. He paid heavily, in like misery of his own, for whatever pangs of jealousy he inflicted. There was sometimes true tragedy for himself hidden within the comedy that he acted for others. (Molière, to the very end of his life, acted in the comedies that he wrote.) When some play of his represented the torments of jealousy in the heart of a husband, it was probably not so much acting, as it was real life, that the spectators saw proceeding on the stage between Molière and his wife, confronted with each other in performing the piece.
Despite his faults, Molière was cast in a noble, generous mould, of character as well as of genius. Expostulated with for persisting to appear on the stage when his health was such that he put his life at stake in so doing, he replied that the men and women of his company depended for their bread on the play's going through, and appear he would. He actually died an hour or so after playing the part of the Imaginary Invalid in his comedy of that name. That piece was the last work of his pen.
Molière produced in all some thirty dramatic pieces, from among which we select a few of the most celebrated for brief description and illustration.
The "Bourgeois Gentilhomme" ("Shopkeeper turned Gentleman") partakes of the nature of the farce quite as much as it does of the comedy. But it is farce such as only a man of genius could produce. In it Molière ridicules the airs and affectations of a rich man vulgarly ambitious to figure in a social rank too exalted for his birth, his breeding, or his merit. Jourdain is the name under which Molière satirizes such a character. We give a fragment from one of the scenes. M. Jourdain is in process of fitting himself for that higher position in society to which he aspires. He will equip himself with the necessary knowledge. To this end he employs a professor of philosophy to come and give him lessons at his house:—
M. Jourdain. I have the greatest desire in the world to be learned; and it vexes me more than I can tell, that my father and mother did not make me learn thoroughly all the sciences when I was young.
Professor of Philosophy. This is a praiseworthy feeling. Nam sine doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago. You understand this, and you have, no doubt, a knowledge of Latin?
M. Jour. Yes; but act as if I had none. Explain to me the meaning of it.
Prof. Phil. The meaning of it is, that, without science, life is an image of death.
M. Jour. That Latin is quite right.
Prof. Phil. Have you any principles, any rudiments, of science?
M. Jour. Oh, yes! I can read and write.
Prop. Phil. With what would you like to begin? Shall I teach you logic?
M. Jour. And what may this logic be?
Prof. Phil. It is that which teaches us the three operations of the mind.
M. Jour. What are they—these three operations of the mind?
Prof. Phil. The first, the second, and the third. The first is to conceive well by means of universals; the second, to judge well by means of categories; and the third, to draw a conclusion aright by means of the figures Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferio, Baralipton, etc.
M. Jour. Pooh! what repulsive words! This logic does not by any means suit me. Teach me something more enlivening.
Prof. Phil. Will you learn moral philosophy?
M. Jour. Moral philosophy?
Prof. Phil. Yes.
M. Jour. What does it say, this moral philosophy?
Prof. Phil.It treats of happiness, teaches men to moderate their passions, and—
M. Jour. No, none of that. I am devilishly hot-tempered, and morality, or no morality, I like to give full vent to my anger whenever I have a mind to it.
Prof. Phil. Would you like to learn physics?
M. Jour. And what have physics to say for themselves?
Prof. Phil. Physics are that science which explains the principles of natural things and the properties of bodies; which discourses of the nature of the elements, of metals, minerals, stones, plants, and animals; which teaches us the cause of all the meteors, the rainbow, the ignis fatuus, comets, lightning, thunder, thunderbolts, rain, snow, hail, and whirlwinds.
M. Jour. There is too much hullaballoo in all that, too much riot and rumpus.
Prof. Phil. Very good.
M. Jour. And now I want to intrust you with a great secret. I am in love with a lady of quality, and I should be glad if you would help me to write something to her in a short letter which I mean to drop at her feet.
Prof. Phil. Very well.
M. Jour. That will be gallant, will it not?
Prof. Phil. Undoubtedly. Is it verse you wish to write to her?
M. Jour. Oh, no! not verse.
Prof. Phil. You only wish prose?
M. Jour. No. I wish for neither verse nor prose.
Prof. Phil. It must be one or the other.
M. Jour.Why?
Prof. Phil. Because, sir, there is nothing by which we can express ourselves except prose or verse.
M. Jour. There is nothing but prose or verse?
Prof. Phil. No, sir. Whatever is not prose, is verse; and whatever is not verse, is prose.
M. Jour.And when we speak, what is that, then?
Prof. Phil. Prose.
M. Jour. What! when I say, "Nicole, bring me my slippers, and give me my nightcap," is that prose?
Prof. Phil. Yes, sir.
M. Jour. Upon my word, I have been speaking prose these forty years without being aware of it; and I am under the greatest obligation to you for informing me of it. Well, then, I wish to write to her in a letter, "Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love;" but I would have this worded in a genteel manner, and turned prettily.
Prof. Phil. Say that the fire of her eyes has reduced your heart to ashes; that you suffer day and night for her, tortures—
M. Jour. No, no, no, I don't any of that. I simply wish for what I tell you,—"Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love."
Prof. Phil. Still, you might amplify the thing a little.
M. Jour. No, I tell you, I will have nothing but these very words in the letter; but they must be put in a fashionable way, and arranged as they should be. Pray show me a little, so that I may see the different ways in which they can be put.
Prof. Phil. They may be put first of all, as you have said, "Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love;" or else, "Of love die make me, fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes;" or, "Your beautiful eyes of love make me, fair Marchioness, die;" or, "Die of love your beautiful eyes, fair Marchioness, make me;" or else, "Me make your beautiful eyes die, fair Marchioness, of love."
M. Jour. But of all these ways, which is the best?
Prof. Phil. The one you said,—"Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love."
M. Jour. Yet I have never studied, and I did all right off at the first shot.
The "Bourgeois Gentilhomme" is a very amusing comedy throughout.
From "Les Femmes Savantes" ("The Learned Women")—"The Blue-Stockings," we might perhaps freely render the title—we present one scene to indicate the nature of the comedy. There had grown to be a fashion in Paris, among certain women high in social rank, of pretending to the distinction of skill in literary criticism, and of proficiency in science. It was the Hôtel de Rambouillet reduced to absurdity. That fashionable affectation Molière made the subject of his comedy, "The Learned Women."
In the following extracts, Molière satirizes, under the name of Trissotin, a contemporary writer, one Cotin. The poem which Trissotin reads for the learned women to criticise and admire, is an actual production of this gentleman. Imagine the domestic coterie assembled, and Trissotin, the poet, their guest. He is present, prepared to regale them with what he calls his sonnet. We need to explain that the original poem is thus inscribed: "To Mademoiselle de Longueville, now Duchess of Namur, on her Quartan Fever." The conceit of the sonneteer is that the fever is an enemy luxuriously lodged in the lovely person of its victim, and there insidiously plotting against her life:—
Trissotin. Sonnet to the Princess Urania on her Fever,
Your prudence sure is fast asleep,'
That thus luxuriously you keep
And lodge magnificently so
Your very hardest-hearted foe.
Bélise. Ah! what a pretty beginning!
Armande. What a charming turn it has!
Philaminte. He alone possesses the talent of making easy verses.
Arm. We must yield to prudence fast asleep.
Bél. Lodge one's very hardest-hearted foe is full of charms for me.
Phil. I like luxuriously and magnificently: these two adverbs joined together sound admirably.
Bél. Let us hear the rest.
Triss. Your prudence sure is fast asleep,
That thus luxuriously you keep
And lodge magnificently so
Your very hardest-hearted foe.
Arm. Prudence fast asleep.
Bél. To lodge one's foe.
Phil. Luxuriously and magnificently.
Triss. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say,
From out your chamber, decked so gay,
Where, ingrate vile, with murderous knife,
Bold she assails your lovely life.
Bél. Ah! gently. Allow me to breathe, I beseech you.
Arm.Give us time to admire, I beg.
Phil. One feels, at hearing these verses, an indescribable something which goes through one's inmost soul, and makes one feel quite faint.
Arm. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say, From out your chamber, decked so gay—
How prettily chamber, decked so gay, is said here! And with what wit the metaphor is introduced!
Phil. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say.
Ah! in what an admirable taste that whate'er men say is! To my mind, the passage is invaluable.
Arm. My heart is also in love with whate'er men say.
Bél. I am of your opinion: whate'er men say is a happy expression.
Arm. I wish I had written it.
Bél. It is worth a whole poem.
Phil. But do you, like me, thoroughly understand the wit of it?
Arm. and Bél. Oh! Oh!
Phil. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say. Although another should take the fever's part, pay no attention; laugh at the gossips.
Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say,
Whate'er men say, whate'er men say.
This whate'er men say, says a great deal more than it seems. I do not know if every one is like me, but I discover in it a hundred meanings.