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Of Alfred de Musset I had heard a great deal. Marshall and the Marquise were in the habit of reading him in moments of relaxation, they had marked their favourite passages, so he came to me highly recommended. Nevertheless, I made but little progress in his poetry. His modernisms were out of tune with the present strain of my aspirations, and I did not find the unexpected word and the eccentricities of expression which were, and are still, so dear to me. I am not a purist; an error of diction is very pardonable if it does not err on the side of the commonplace; the commonplace, the natural, is constitutionally abhorrent to me; and I have never been able to read with any very thorough sense of pleasure even the opening lines of "Rolla," that splendid lyrical outburst. What I remember of it now are those two odious chevilles marchait et respirait, and Astarté fille de l'onde amère; nor does the fact that amère rhymes with mère condone the offence, although it proves that even Musset felt that perhaps the richness of the rhyme might render tolerable the intolerable. And it is to my credit that the Spanish love songs moved me not at all; and it was not until I read that magnificently grotesque poem "La Ballade
Of Alfred de Musset I had heard a great deal. Marshall and the Marquise were in the habit of reading him in moments of relaxation, they had marked their favourite passages, so he came to me highly recommended. Nevertheless, I made but little progress in his poetry. His modernisms were out of tune with the strain of my aspirations at that moment, and I did not find the unexpected word and the eccentricities of expression which were, and are still, so dear to me. I am not a purist; an error of diction is very pardonable if it does not err on the side of the commonplace; the commonplace, the natural, is constitutionally abhorrent to me; and I have never been able to read with any very thorough sense of pleasure even the opening lines of "Rolla," that splendid lyrical outburst. What I remember of it now are those two odious chevilles marchait et respirait, and Astarté fille de l'onde amère; nor does the fact that amère rhymes with mère condone the offence, although it proves that even Musset felt that perhaps the richness of the rhyme might render tolerable the intolerable. And it is to my credit that the Spanish love songs moved me not at all; and it was not until I read that magnificently grotesque poem "La Ballade
As I dropped off to sleep that night, the last sound of which I was conscious was, still that cannon-like chorus, coming from the direction of the square: Ave, Ave, Ave Maria! Ave, Ave, Ave Maria! Elle ne marchait que très difficilement et très péniblement. A la sortie de la piscine, vendredi soir, elle a pu marcher facilement.
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