Kleïs in Naukratis, until the Lesbian exiles were recalled to their native land by Pittakus. He then started homeward with his wife, but fell ill on the journey, and died soon after his arrival at Mitylene. Sappho, who had derided her brother for marrying one beneath him, soon became an enthusiastic admirer of the beautiful widow and rivaled Alcaeus in passionate songs to her praise.” We may mention also in closing this chapter the lyrics, published in a small volume, called _Stürme_, by Carmen Sylva, the nom de plume of Rumania’s late queen, because in these lyrics the tragedy of Sapphic love has a German political rather than a Lesbian setting. X. SAPPHO IN FRENCH LITERATURE[168] The poetess of passion, perfect in expression, is more akin to French literature than to German, and so it is not surprising to discover Sapphic echoes in every period of the former from that of the erudite and artistic poetry of the Pléiade in the sixteenth century to the present day of Maurice Donnay. In the sixteenth century Louise Labé was composing sonnets which burned like an ode of Sappho, and in 1556 Remy Belleau in his _Anacréon_ published the first French translation of Sappho. Only three years later (1559), another of the Pléiade, Pierre de Ronsard, who turned from his admiration of Homer and Pindar to Horace, Anacreon, and Sappho, gave in the second book of his _Amours_, a translation of the second ode of Sappho: Je suis un demy-dieu quand, assis vis-à-vis De toy, mon cher souci, j’escoute des devis, Devis entre-rompus d’un gracieux sourire, Souris qui me retient le coeur emprisonné: Car, en voyant tes yeux, je me pasme étonné Et de mes pauvres flancs un seul vent je ne tire. Ma langue s’engourdit, un petit feu me court Fretillant sous la peau; je suis muet et sourd Et une obscure nuit dessus mes yeux demeure; Mon sang devient glacé, l’esprit fuit de mon corps, Je tremble tout de crainte, et peu s’en faut alors Qu’à tes pieds estendu sans âme je ne meure. Ronsard also translated the famous folk-song, which has been so much imitated in all literatures, wrongly calling it an epigram:[169] Desia la Lune est couchée, La poussiniere est cachée, Et ia la my-nuit brunette Vers l’Aurore s’est panchée, Et ie dors au lict seulette. In the second book of his _Poèmes a Christophile de Choiseul_ (Edition Laumonier V, 186), Ronsard (1556) said: Le doux Anacreon me plaist et ie voudrois que la douce Saphon Qui si bien resueilloit la lyre Lesbienne, En France accompaignast la Muse Teïenne! Early in the seventeenth century Malherbe wrote the following stanzas for le Duc de Bellegarde “to a lady who imagined that he was in love with her,” in which he copied from the Lesbian poetess certain symptoms of love: