I doubt that the odes of the Maison de Sylvie are superior to the other works of Théophile. However, if any one asked me: "What must I read by Théophile?" I would reply to him: "La Maison de Sylvie, on condition that you read it at Chantilly beside the pool." The great poets have sometimes added a special grace or nobility to the landscapes which they have described. But it is also true that ancient verses, whose attractiveness seems lost today, réassumé an indescribable savor in the very places which have formerly inspired them. The poet sometimes makes us better feel the beauty of nature; but by a mysterious sorcery, nature can return a breath of life to dead poems. To leave, before dying, The living features of a painting Which can never perish Except by the loss of nature, I pass golden pencils Over the most revered spots Where virtue takes refuge, Whose door was open to me To put my head in shelter, When they burned my effigy. Poor rhymer, they are indeed effaced, the lines of your "golden pencils"! You promised yourself immortality, you promised it to Sylvie: Thus, under modest vows My verses promise Sylvie That charming fame which posterity Calls a second life; But you added with more reason: What if my writings, scorned, Cannot be authorized As witnesses of her glory, These streams, these woods, Will assume souls and voices, To preserve its memory. Such has been fate: it is the soul and the voices of the waters, the woods and the rocks which preserve today the memory of the beautiful Italian princess and her poor devil of a poet! It is not for the pure beauty of the verses (which, however, do not lack grace), it is for the elegance of the picture which they evoke from far away, from very far away, that we love today to read once more these lines: One evening when the salty waves Lent their soft bed To the four red coursers Which are yoked by the sun, I bent my eyes upon the edge Of a bed where the Naiad sleeps, And, watching Sylvie fish, I saw the fishes fight To see which would soonest lose its life In honor of her fishhooks. Warning against noise with one hand And throwing her fine with the other, She causes that, at the onset of night, The day should decline more sweetly. The sun feared to light her And feared to go away; The stars did not dare to appear,