ais patience,
Le jeune Comte folatrait,
Le grand Comte se dandinait,
Et ce beau vogage de France
Dans le fond de son coeur chretiennement damnait.

"We failed not, however, to struggle gradually along; at last we arrived
in that Stronghold, where [as preface to the War of 1734, known to some
of us]--

Where the garrison, too supple,
Surrendered so piteously
After the first blurt of explosion
From the cannon of the French.

Ou a garrison, troupe flasque,
Se rendit si piteusement
Apres la premiere bourasque
Du canon francais foudroyant.

You recognize Kehl in this description. It was in that fine
Fortress,--where, by the way, the breaches are still lying unrepaired
[Reich being a slow corpus in regard to such things],--that the
Postmaster, a man of more foresight than we, asked If we had got
passports?

No, said I to him; of passports
We never had the whim.
Strong ones I believe it would need
To recall, to our side of the limit,
Subjects of Pluto King of the Dead:
But, from the Germanic Empire
Into the gallant and cynical abode
Of Messieurs your pretty Frenchmen,--A jolly and beaming air,
Rubicund faces, not ignorant of wine,
These are the passports which, legible if you look on us,
Our troop produces to you for that end.

Non, lui dis-je, des passe-ports
Nous n'eumes jamais la folie.
Il en faudrait, je crois, de forts
Pour ressusciter a la vie
De chez Pluton le roi des morts;
Mais de l'empire germanique
Au sejour galant et cynique
De Messieurs vos jolis Francais,
Un air rebondissant et frais,
Une face rouge et bachique,
Sont les passe-ports qu'en nos traits
Vous produit ici notre clique.

"No, Messieurs, said the provident Master of Passports; no salvation
without passport. Seeing then that Necessity had got us in the dilemma
of either manufacturing passports ourselves or not entering Strasburg,
we took the former branch of the alternative and manufactured one;--in
which feat, the Prussian arms, which I had on my seal, were marvellously
furthersome."

This is a fact, as the old Newspapers and confirmatory Fassmann more
directly apprise us. "The Landlord [or Postmaster] at Kehl, having
signified that there was no crossing without Passport," Friedrich, at
first, somewhat taken aback, bethought him of his watch-seal with the
Ro