‘En maux cuisants vieillesse abonde: C’est la goutte qui nous meurtrit; La cécité, prison profonde; La surdité, dont chacun rit. Puis la raison, lampe qui baisse, N’a plus que des feux tremblotants. Enfants, honorez la vieillesse! Hélas! hélas! j’ai cinquante ans! ‘Ciel! j’entends la Mort, qui, joyeuse, Arrive en se frottant les mains. A ma porte la fossoyeuse Frappe; adieu, messieurs les humains! En bas, guerre, famine et peste; En haut, plus d’astres éclatants. Ouvrons, tandis que Dieu me reste. Hélas! hélas! j’ai cinquante ans. ‘Mais non; c’est vous! vous, jeune amie, Sœur de charité des amours! Vous tirez mon âme endormie Du cauchemar des mauvais jours. Semant les roses de votre âge Partout, comme fait le printemps, Parfumez les rêves d’un sage. Hélas! hélas! j’ai cinquante ans.’ This is the last scene of the _grisette_, of whom we read in so many songs sparkling with youth and gaiety. A certain intellectuality, however, pervades Béranger’s love-songs. You seem to feel, to see, not merely the emotion, but the mind, in the background viewing that emotion. You are conscious of a considerateness qualifying and contrasting with the effervescing champagne of the feelings described. Desire is rarefied; sense half becomes an idea. You may trace a similar metamorphosis in the poetry of passion itself. If we contrast such a poem as Shelley’s _Epipsychidion_ with the natural language of common passion, we see how curiously the intellect can take its share in the dizziness of sense. In the same way, in the lightest poems of Béranger we feel that it may be infused, may interpenetrate the most buoyant effervescence.