e
to speak it, I believe) enough to make it out. He read aloud, and
translated as he read. At intervals, while he rested, I took the book
bought from the ragpicker of Soissons, and read passages from the
_Romancero_. Like Nodier, I translated as I read. We compared the
English with the Castilian book; we confronted the dramatic with the
epic. Nodier stood up for Shakespeare, whom he could read in English,
and I for the _Romancero_, which I could read in Spanish. We brought
face to face, he the bastard Faulconbridge, I the bastard Mudarra. And
little by little in contradicting we convinced each other, and Nodier
became filled with enthusiasm for the _Romancero_, and I with admiration
for Shakespeare.

Listeners arrived. One passes the evening as best one can in a
provincial town on a coronation day when one doesn't go to the ball. We
formed quite a little club. There was an academician, M. Roger; a man of
letters, M. d'Eckstein; M. de Marcellus, friend and country neighbour
of my father, who poked fun at his royalism and mine; good old Marquis
d'Herbouville, and M. Hemonin, donor of the book that cost six sous.

"It isn't worth the money!" exclaimed M. Roger.

The conversation developed into a debate. Judgment was passed upon _King
John_. M. de Marcellus declared that the assassination of Arthur was an
improbable incident. It was pointed out to him that it was a matter of
history. It was with difficulty that he became reconciled to it. For
kings to kill each other was impossible. To M. de Marcellus's mind the
murdering of kings began on January 21. Regicide was synonymous with
'93. To kill a king was an unheard-of thing that the "populace" alone
were capable of doing. No king except Louis XVI. had ever been violently
put to death. He, however, reluctantly admitted the case of Charles
I. In his death also he saw the hand of the populace. All the rest was
demagogic lying and calumny.

Although as good a royalist as he, I ventured to insinuate that the
sixteenth century had existed, and that it was the period when the
Jesuits had clearly propounded the question of "bleeding the basilic
vein," that is to say of cases in which the king ought to be slain;
a question which, once brought forward, met with such success that it
resulted in two kings, Henry III. and Henry IV., being stabbed, and a
Jesuit, Father Guignard, being hanged.

Then we passed to the details of the drama, situations, scenes, and
personages. Nodier poi