BÉRENGÈRE, _rendant le dernier soupir._ Me voici ... Prends moi YAQOUB. Oh! malédiction!... son front devient livide ... Son cœur?... Il ne bat plus!... Sa main? Le flacon vide!..." It will be seen that this contains three imitations; the imitation of Racine's _Andromaque_; that of Goethe's _Goetz von Berlichingen_; and that of Alfred de Musset's _Marrons de feu._ The reason is that _Charles VII._ is, first of all, a study, a laboriously worked up study and not a work done on the spur of the moment; it is a work of assimilation and not an original drama, which cost me infinitely more labour than _Antony_; but it does not therefore mean that I love it as much as _Antony._ Yet a few more words before I finish the subject. Let us run through the imitations in detail. I said I borrowed different passages from Maugrabin in _Quentin Durward._ Here they are:-- "'Unhappy being!' Quentin Durward exclaims. 'Think better! ... What canst thou expect, dying in such opinions, and impenitent?' "'To be resolved into the elements,' said the hardened atheist; my hope, trust and expectation is, that the mysterious frame of humanity shall melt into the general mass of nature, to be recompounded in the other forms with which she daily supplies those which daily disappear, and return under different forms,--the watery particles to streams and showers, the earthly parts to enrich their mother earth, the airy portions to wanton in the breeze; and those of fire to supply the blaze of Aldeboran and his brethren--In this faith have I lived, and I will die in it!'" Yaqoub is condemned to death for having killed Raymond the Comte's archer. "LE COMTE. Esclave, si tu meurs en de tels sentiments, Q'espères-tu? YAQOUB. De rendre un corps aux éléments, Masse commune où l'homme, en expirant, rapporte Tout ce qu'en le créant la nature en emporte. Si la terre, si l'eau, si l'air et si le feu Me formèrent, aux mains du hasard ou de Dieu, Le vent, en dispersant ma poussière en sa course, Saura bien reporter chaque chose à sa source!" The second imitation examined in detail is again borrowed from Walter Scott, but from _The Talisman_ this time, not from _Quentin Durward._ The Knight of the Leopard and the Saracen, after fighting against one another, effect a truce, and take lunch, chatting together, by the fountain called the Diamond of the Desert. "'Stranger,' asked the Saracen,--'with how many men didst thou come on this warfare?' "'By my faith,' said Sir Kenneth, 'with aid of friends and kinsmen, I was hardly pinched to furnish forth ten well-appointed lances, with maybe some fifty more men, archers and varlets included.'