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The following beautiful lines, with which I close an account of the most horribly interesting spot I ever visited, are from the pen of Delille: DELILLE. CHATEAU DE SAINT GERMAIN. This ancient pile of building is now a barrack for the King's Gardes du Corps, containing two troops, one of Luxembourg, and the other of Grammont, which are relieved every three months.
We that is, the Trio had been reading one evening; or rather, our friend Gratian read to me and the Curate, the "Conversation with the Abbé Delille and W. L." We loitered, too, in the reading, as we do when the country is of a pleasant aspect, to look about us and admire and we interspersed our own little talk by the way.
Now, Delille went into tragedy. Tragedy is not to this school what it was to Will Shakespeare, say, a source of emotions of every sort, but a convenient frame for the solution of a multitude of petty descriptive problems which it propounds as it goes along.
Two years passed, when one day, in a lonely part of the Thiergarten, I met whom do you think? M. Delille; but pale, sad, solitary, subdued. "Well, here I am again," said he. "All my fine dreams have disappeared. I won't bore you with the story. The fact is that is to say one can never count upon one's plans in this world.
They set up to be original, forsooth, and indulge in stanzas that nobody can understand, and descriptive poetry after the pattern of the younger men who discovered Delille, and imagine that they are doing something new. Poets have been swarming like cockchafers for two years past. I have lost twenty thousand francs through poetry in the last twelvemonth. You ask Gabusson!
In a short time the holy bands had made them one. There was no acting about either of them. M. Delille was pale; Mademoiselle still paler. Their emotion was obviously genuine. Some folks think when actors tremble or shed tears, it must be only acting; and that they can get married or die as easily in the world as on the stage. This is a mistake.
Sotheby's friend, the poet Delille, sleeps beneath a cumbrous mass of marble, within which his wife immerses herself once a week, to manifest sorrow for one whose incessant tormentor I am told she was during his life. The inscriptions were for the most part commonplace. I copied out a few of the best. I was sorry to observe not one in 20 had the slightest allusion to Religion.
One morning, hard at work in my office, I was surprised by a card, "Monsieur Delille, du Théâtre Français." The gentleman wished to have the honor of a few moments' conversation.
Examine the "Journal de la Libraire" and you will find poems on the game of draughts, on backgammon, on tricks with cards, on geography, typography, comedy, etc., not to mention the vaunted masterpieces of Delille on Piety, Imagination, Conversation; and those of Berchoux on Gastromania and Dansomania, etc.
Ah, if these men knew but we must be patient. The doctor positively assures me she is doing very well." Three weeks later I was again taking a walk through the Thiergarten, wrapped in my cloak, for it was winter, when I perceived M. Delille sitting on a quite wet bench. His face was very pale. I never saw a sadder expression. Hoping to rally him, I said: "What a melancholy countenance!
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