Mais oh dis moi, pourquoi tes ossemens par chance Deposes dans la tombe, out brise leurs liens, Pour te jeter ici _comme une langue aux chiens_. Probably the "ponderous and marble jaws" suggested this extraordinary comparison. In the next, act, evidently thinking that poor Ophelia has been neglected by her creator, M. de Chatelain makes Polonius speak of her to the king and queen as "un vrai morceau de roi"--a gentle method of suggesting that she is worthy of the distinguished honor of a royal alliance. But the fair Ophelia is destined to suffer nearly as unkind treatment from the hands of her French usher as she endures from her princely lover. We give entire the translation of her beautiful lament, which begins-- O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! and which M. de Chatelain thus renders: Oh! quelle triste fin pour si grande epopee Le soldat, l'erudit, l'oeil, la langue et l'epee, Tout cela culbute--perdu. Le noble espoir, La fleur de ce pays--le plus riant miroir De la mode toujours;--le plus parfait modele De gout;--des observes la plus _fine dentelle_-- Entierement a bas! oui, _sans ressource_ a bas! Et moi qui dans ses voeux trouvais tant de soulas, Qui du miel _de ses vers_ ai suce la musique, De sa raison je vois descendre la tunique Sur moi, malheur!... C'est comme au lointain le tin-tin De la cloche ... de pres qui se change en tocsin. De tout ce que j'ai vu conserver souvenance Et voir ce que je vois! Quelle desesperance! We are at a loss which to admire most--Ophelia sucking the music from Hamlet's honeyed verses, or the "sweet bells" whose tin-tin changes to a tocsin, or the comparison of Hamlet to fine lace, or the "melancholy ending to a grand epic." The passage-- We shall obey, were she ten times our mother, is thus translated: Nous obeirons, plutot dix fois qu'une. N'est elle pas notre mere? M. de Chatelain confesses in a note that his translation is not in accordance with the text, but he adds: "Nous ne concevons pas la penee ainsi exprimee." It is a good thing for Shakespeare that he has found a French commentator who understands what he meant to say better than he did himself. Ophelia's first exclamation in the mad scene, "Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?" is translated, De Danemarck ou donc est _la reine jolie_? Such an epithet applied to the middle-aged and matronly Gertrude, the mother of the thirty-years'-old Hamlet, is pretty--very pretty, indeed. A few pages farther on the "bonny-sweet Robin" of Ophelia's song is supposed by the translator to be a bird, as he thus renders the passage: Car le gentil Robin n'est un oiseau de proie, Il fait tout ma joie!