Helen—­Alas! one need not have married a great monarch for that.

Maintenon—­But deign to inform me, Helen, if you were really as beautiful as fame reports? for to say truth, I cannot in your shade see the beauty which for nine long years had set the world in arms.

Helen—­Honestly, no:  I was rather low, and something sunburnt; but I had the good fortune to please; that was all.  I was greatly obliged to Homer.

Maintenon—­And did you live tolerably with Menelaus after all your adventures?

Helen—­As well as possible.  Menelaus was a good-natured domestic man, and was glad to sit down and end his days in quiet.  I persuaded him that Venus and the Fates were the cause of all my irregularities, which he complaisantly believed.  Besides, I was not sorry to return home:  for to tell you a secret, Paris had been unfaithful to me long before his death, and was fond of a little Trojan brunette whose office it was to hold up my train; but it was thought dishonorable to give me up.  I began to think love a very foolish thing:  I became a great housekeeper, worked the battles of Troy in tapestry, and spun with my maids by the side of Menelaus, who was so satisfied with my conduct, and behaved, good man, with so much fondness, that I verily think this was the happiest period of my life.

Maintenon—­Nothing more likely; but the most obscure wife in Greece could rival you there.—­Adieu! you have convinced me how little fame and greatness conduce to happiness.

LIFE

Life!  I know not what thou art,
But know that thou and I must part;
And when or how or where we met,
I own to me’s a secret yet. 
But this I know, when thou art fled,
Where’er they lay these limbs, this head,
No clod so valueless shall be,
As all that then remains of me. 
O whither, whither dost thou fly,
Where bend unseen thy trackless course,
And in this strange divorce,
Ah, tell where I must seek this compound I? 
To the vast ocean of empyreal flame,
From whence thy essence came,
Dost thou thy flight pursue, when freed
From matter’s base encumbering weed? 
Or dost thou, hid from sight,
Wait, like some spell-bound knight,
Through blank oblivion’s years th’ appointed hour,
To break thy trance and reassume thy power? 
Yet canst thou without thought or feeling be? 
O say what art thou, when no more thou’rt thee? 
Life! we’ve been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
’Tis hard to part when friends are dear;
Perhaps ’twill cost a sigh, a tear;
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not good-night, but in some brighter clime
Bid me good-morning.

PRAISE TO GOD

Praise to God, immortal praise,
For the love that crowns our days—­
Bounteous source of every joy,
Let Thy praise our tongues employ!