So saying, the old fellow laid hold of a bulky manuscript book.

“Listen,” he cried, “listen.  It is St. Fabricius addressing the Proconsul Flavius: 

Acheve, fais dresser l’appareil souhaite De ma mort, ou plutot de ma felicite.  Le Roi des Rois, du haut de son celeste trone, Deja me tend la palme et tresse ma couronne.

“Do you think it would be better if he said: 

Acheve, fais dresser l’appareil souhaite De ma mort, ou plutot de ma felicite.  Je vois le Roi des Rois me tendre la couronne, Quel n’en est le prix quand c’est Dieu qui la donne!

“Doubtless these latter lines are more correct than the others, but they are less vigorous, and a poet should never sacrifice meaning to metre.

  Le Roi des Rois, du haut de son celeste trone,
  Deja me tend la palme et tresse ma couronne."

This time, as he declaimed the verses, he went through the corresponding gestures of tendering a gift and plaiting a garland.

“It is better so,” he added, “better so!”

Jean, in some surprise, said yes, it was certainly better.

“Certainly better, yes,” cried the old poet, smiling with the happy innocence of a little child.

Then he confided in Jean that it was a very difficult thing indeed to write poetry.  You must get the caesura in the right place, bring in the rhyme naturally, make your rhythm run in divers cadences, now strong, now sweet, sometimes onomatopoetic, use only words either elevated in themselves or dignified by the circumstances.

He read one passage of his Tragedy because he had his doubts about the number of feet in the line, another because he thought it contained some bold strokes happily conceived, then a third to elucidate the two first, eventually the whole five acts from start to finish.  He acted the words as he read, modulating his voice to suit the various characters, stamping and storming, and to adjust his black skullcap—­it would tumble off at the pathetic parts—­dealing himself a succession of sounding slaps on the crown of his head.

This sacred drama, in which no woman appeared, was to be played by the pupils of the Institution at a forthcoming function.  The previous year he had staged his first tragedy, le Bapteme de Clovis, in the same approved style.  A regular, Monsieur Schuver, had arranged garlands of paper roses to represent the battlefield of Tolbiac and the basilica at Rheims.  To give a wild, barbaric look to the boys who represented Clovis’ henchmen, the sister superintendent of the wardrobe had tacked up their white trousers to the knee.  But the Abbe Bordier hoped greater things still for his new piece.

Jean applauded and improved upon these ambitious projects.  His suggestions for scenery and costumes were admirable.  He would have the ruthless Flavius seated on a curule chair of ivory, draped with purple, erected before a portico painted on the back cloth.  The costumes of the Roman soldiers, he insisted, must be copied from those on Trajan’s Column.