I felt my hair stand on end, but I mastered my emotions, and told him quietly enough that one day, perhaps, he would find himself obliged to praise the poem more highly than I had done.  I quoted several instances of the insufficiency of a first perusal.

“That’s true,” said he; “but as for your Merlin, I will read him no more.  I have put him beside Chapelain’s ’Pucelle’.”

“Which pleases all the critics, in spite of its bad versification, for it is a good poem, and Chapelain was a real poet though he wrote bad verses.  I cannot overlook his genius.”

My freedom must have shocked him, and I might have guessed it when he told me he had put the ‘Macaronicon’ beside the ‘Pucelle’.  I knew that there was a poem of the same title in circulation, which passed for Voltaire’s; but I also knew that he disavowed it, and I thought that would make him conceal the vexation my explanation must have caused him.  It was not so, however; he contradicted me sharply, and I closed with him.

“Chapelain,” said I, “has the merit of having rendered his subject-matter pleasant, without pandering to the tastes of his readers by saying things shocking to modesty and piety.  So thinks my master Crebillon:” 

“Crebillon!  You cite a weighty authority.  But how is my friend Crebillon your master, may I ask?”

“He taught me to speak French in less than two years, and as a mark of my gratitude I translated his Radamiste into Italian Alexandrines.  I am the first Italian who has dared to use this metre in our language.”

“The first?  I beg your pardon, as that honour belongs to my friend Pierre Jacques Martelli.”

“I am sorry to be obliged to tell you that you are making a mistake.”

“Why, I have his works, printed at Bologna, in my room!”

“I don’t deny that, I am only talking about the metre used by Martelli.  What you are thinking of must be verses of fourteen syllables; without alternative masculine and feminine rhymes.  However, I confess that he thinks he has imitated the French Alexandrines, and his preface made me explode with laughter.  Did you read it?”

“Read it?  I always read prefaces, and Martelli proves there that his verses have the same effect in Italian as our Alexandrine verses have in French.”

“Exactly, that’s what’s so amusing.  The worthy man is quite mistaken, and I only ask you to listen to what I have to say on the subject.  Your masculine verse has only twelve poetic syllables, and the feminine thirteen.  All Martelli’s lines have fourteen syllables, except those that finish with a long vowel, which at the end of a line always counts as two syllables.  You will observe that the first hemistitch in Martelli always consists of seven syllables, while in French it only has six.  Your friend Pierre Jacques was either stone deaf or very hard of hearing.”

“Then you have followed our theory of versification rigorously.”