This voice will belong to a man _born an outlaw, old, arriving from Rome,_ which leads one to suppose he would be about sixty or seventy years of age. Let us take a mean course and say sixty-five @ 65 This man, a born outlaw, _saw in Rome, then a papal city, the crown and golden sceptre of his grandfather._ How long ago can that have been? Let us say fifty years @ 50 For how long had this grandfather been exiled? It cannot have been long, because he had his sceptre and gold crown still, and sold them to _feed the courage of false agents and luckless writers._ Let us reckon it at fifteen years and say no more about it @ 15 Let us add to that the twenty years that have rolled by since 1833 @ 20 And we shall have to take away a total from 166 of 150 Now he who from 166 pays back 150 keeps 16 as remainder,--and yet, and yet the poet said the year 2000 is _open to doubt._ Do not let us dispute the question, but let us even allow more time. We return thee thanks, Béranger, thou poet and prophet! What happened upon the appearance of these prophecies which were calculated to wound many very different interests? That the people who knew the old poems of Béranger by heart, because their ambition, their hopes and desires, had made weapons of them wherewith to destroy the old throne, did not even read his new songs, whilst those who did read them said to each other, "Have you read Béranger's new songs? No. Well, don't read them. Poor fellow, he is going off!" So they did not read them, or, if they had read them, the word was passed round to say, that the song-writer was going off. No, on the contrary, the poet was growing greater, not deteriorating! But just as from song-writer he had become poet, so, from poet, he was becoming a prophet. I mean that, to the masses, he was becoming more and more unintelligible. Antiquity has preserved us the songs of Anacreon, but has forgotten the prophecies of Cassandra. And why? Homer tells us: the Greeks refused to put faith in the prophetic utterances of the daughter of Priam and Hecuba. Alas! Béranger followed her in this and held his peace; and a whole world of masterpieces on the eve of bursting forth was arrested on his silent lips. He smiled with that arch smile of his, and said-- "Ah! I am declining, am I? Well, then, ask for songs of those who are rising!" Rossini had said the same thing after _Guillaume Tell_, and what was the result? We had no more operas by him, and no more songs from Béranger.