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 his forty long cantos, there is too much of him.”

“It is fifty-one cantos, M. de Voltaire.”

The great man was silent, but Madame Denis was equal to the occasion.

“Come, come,” said she, “let us hear the thirty-six stanzas which earned the author the title of divine, and which are to make us tremble.”

I then began, in an assured voice, but not in that monotonous tone adopted by the Italians, with which the French so justly reproach us.  The French would be the best reciters if they were not constrained by the rhyme, for they say what they feel better than any other people.  They have neither the passionate monotonous tone of my fellow-countrymen, nor the sentimentality of the Germans, nor the fatiguing mannerisms of the English; to every period they give its proper expression, but the recurrence of the same sounds partly spoils their recitation.  I recited the fine verses of Ariosto, as if it had been rhythmic prose, animating it by the sound of my voice and the movements of my eyes, and by modulating my intonation according to the sentiments with which I wished to inspire my audience.  They saw how hardly I could restrain my tears, and every eye was wet; but when I came to the stanza,

   “Poiche allargare il freno al dolor puote,
   Che resta solo senza altrui rispetto,
   Giu dagli occhi rigando per le gote
   Sparge un fiume de lacrime sul petto,”