From the time of his admission to the French Academy until his death he wrote little of value. A _Lettre a une dame sur la perte d'un perroquet_, in verse, may serve to represent the decline of his genius. His popularity waned and was eclipsed by that of the vigorous writers and philosophical thinkers that followed him. His graceful sketches were soon to be forgotten in those terrible scenes that closed the century, which the most morbid and foreboding mind could scarcely have foreseen or pictured in the lurid colourings that history has painted them. His closing years were embittered by a knowledge of his failing powers and a growing suspiciousness of those about him, and his increasing poverty would have made his sufferings more keen, had it not been for the generous devotion of a friend, Mlle. de Saint-Jean, with whom he lived for the last few years of his life, in her apartments, rue de Richelieu, and whose modest fortune he shared. He died on February 12,[164] "after a rather long illness,"[165] which he bore with fortitude, and "with all the tranquillity of a Christian philosopher"[166] saw the inevitable end approach. His death passed almost unnoticed by his contemporaries. Although at the time of his death he was seventy-five years of age, as Colle records in his journal, "he did not seem to be fifty-eight."[167] He had that gift, which none but his own light-hearted time has known, of warding off, if not old age itself, at least the appearance of it. And from that first half of the eighteenth century, that period of perennial youth, have come down to us those ever fresh and rose-hued creations, which are our charm to-day, recalling, as they do, a society long past, a brilliancy of wit, of conversation well-nigh forgotten, a gayety, a thoughtlessness, which we of the money-loving, practical, and scientific twentieth century may long for, but not know. CHRONOLOGY OF THE WORKS OF MARIVAUX. (_Taken from the third appendix of Larroumet's "Marivaux", edition of 1882, pp. 592-596._) [Note: T.I. indicates the _Theatre-Italien_ and T.F. the _Theatre- Francais_.] 1706. _Le Pere prudent et equitable, ou Crispin l'heureux fourbe_, comedy in one act, in verse, printed in 1712. 1712. _Pharsamon, ou les Folies romanesques_, novel in ten parts, printed in 1737. 1713-1714. _Les Aventures de..., ou les Effets surprenants de la sympathie_, novel in five volumes. _La Voiture embourbee_, novel in one volume. 1715. _Le Triomphe du Bilboquet, ou la Defaite de l'Esprit, de l'Amour et de la Raison._ 1717. _L'Iliade travestie_, in twelve books and in verse, _Le Telemaque travesti_, in three books, printed in 1736.