Maître Mennesson was right, too; for, in spite of all these demonstrations, all these accusations of imprudence made by timid souls, his practice was the best in Villers-Cotterets and improved daily. At this very moment he was in the seventh heaven of delight. He had got hold of a piece of poetry, in manuscript, against the Bourbons--I do not know how. He had read it to everybody in the town, and then after reading it to everybody, when I came back from Soissons, he, as I have said, ordered me to make two or three copies of it, for those of his friends who, like himself, were anxious to possess this poetical pamphlet. I have never seen it in print, I have never read it since the day I copied it out three times, but such is my memory that I can repeat it from beginning to end. But lest I alarm my readers, I will content myself with quoting a few lines of it. This was how it began:-- "Où suis-je? qu'ai je vu? Les voilà donc ces princes Qu'un sénat insensé rendit à nos provinces; Qui devaient, abjurant les prejugés des rois, Citoyens couronnés, régner au nom des lois; Qui venaient, disaient-ils, désarmant la victoire, Consoler les Français de vingt-cinq ans de gloire! Ils entrent! avec eux, la vengeance de l'orgueil. Ont du Louvre indigné franchi l'antique seuil! Ce n'est plus le sénat, c'est Dieu, c'est leur naissance, C'est le glaive étranger qui leur soumet la France; Ils nous osent d'un roi reprocher l'_échafaud_: Ah! si ce roi, sortant de la nuit du _tombeau_, Armé d'un fer vengeur venait punir le crime, Nous les verrions pâlir aux yeux de leur victime!" Then the author exclaims--in those days authors all exclaimed--abandoning general considerations for the detailed drawing of individuals, and passing the royal family in review:--