Here are eight lines which make us think of La Fontaine, in accent and in sentiment. But we would be embarrassed if we had to find twenty others as well turned in all the works of Théophile. What emphatic odes! What fastidious elegies! What feeble sonnets! Without the divine gift, this kind of nonchalance leads the poet either to platitudes or to disorder. Théophile is not lyrical. Here and there, by fits and starts, a few striking images appear, but the strophes come forth without grace, with terrible monotony. His love poems are frozen: gallantry mingled with sensuality takes the place of passion with him, and while it sometimes inspires a few lines which are happy by reason of gentleness or voluptuousness, most often they are poor nonsense. His best odes, like Matin or Solitude, whence we may select a few delicately shaded lines, repel us as a whole because of his fashion of painting too minutely, too dryly, too exactly.... [Illustration: 0359] So, what caused the great fame of Théophile in the seventeenth century and later gave him the indulgence of the Romanticists, was much less his poetic talent than the renown of his adventures. As Gautier took care to inform us, this poor devil was bor "under a mad star"; he knew exile and prison, he just escaped being burned alive for atheism and libertinage. In a page of charming prose (Théophile's prose is better than his verse) the poet has told us his taste and his philosophy: "One must have a passion not only for men of virtue, for beautiful women, but also for all sorts of beautiful things. I love a fine day, clear fountains, the sight of mountains, the spread of a wide plain, beautiful forests; the ocean, its calms, its swells, its rocky shores; I love also all which more particularly touches the senses: music, flowers, fine clothes, hunting, blooded horses, sweet smells, good cheer; but my desires cling to all these only as a pleasure and not as a labor; when one or another of these diversions entirely occupies a soul, it passes from affection to madness and brutality; the strongest passion which I can have never holds me so strongly that I cannot quit it in a day. If I love, it is as much as I am loved, and, as neither nature nor fortune has given me much power to please, this passion with me has never continued very long either its pleasure or its pain. I cling more closely to study and to good cheer than to all the rest. Books have sometimes tired me, but they have never worn me out, and wine has often rejoiced me, but never intoxicated...." [Once more the memory of La Fontaine crosses our minds and we recall _The Hymn of Passion_ at the end of _Psyche_.] Théophile is thus a perfect Epicurean by birth and by principle, an Epicurean in the diversity and the brevity of his enjoyments, an Epicurean in the prudent and wise administration of his pleasures.