The waves did not dare to ripple, The zephyr did not dare to pass, The very grass restrained its growing. (This is the scene which M. Oliver Merson desired to represent upon one of the walls of Sylvie's pavilion; I do not dare to affirm that he rendered all its charm.) Despite a very obscure and very pretentious mythological machinery, we may still enjoy the Tritons transformed into a troop of white deer by a single glance of Sylvie, and gamboling timidly among the thickets of the wood: Their hearts, deprived of blood by fear, Can only with timidity Behold the sky or trample on the earth. (Here is one of those pictures which abound in Théophile and disconcert the reader, even when the coolness of the charming grove disposes him to every indulgence.) We will also discover an Albanesque grace in a combat of Loves and Nereids in the waters of the Now together, now scattered, They shine in this dark veil And beneath the waves which they have pierced Allow their shadow to disappear; Sometimes in a clear night, Which shines with the fire of their eyes, Without any shadow of clouds, Diana quits her swain And goes down below to swim With her naked stars. But the plays of the Naiads are not the only visions which present themselves to the memory of the prisoner in the inky dungeon where the hatred of Father Garasse has condemned him to rhyme his idyls. He remembers that one day Thyrsis, whom he loves with a "chaste and faithful friendship," came to visit him at Chantilly and to tell him a frightful and interminable nightmare in which were announced all his future misfortunes. This episode might appear superfluous if it did not give Théophile the opportunity to establish in eleven lines the innocence of his manners, an opportune apology after the defamations of the Jesuit.... Soon, casting aside these unpleasant images, he returns to the marvels of the "enchanted park"; he sings the perfume of the flowers, the glances of his mistress, the coolness of the waters, the graces of the spring, the fecundity of nature and the concert of birds which salutes Sylvie in the woods.... And the ode terminates by an abrupt flattery addressed to the King. But he has not yet exhausted the whole chaplet of lovable remembrances; he diverts himself by imagining the song of the nightingales, and in the darkness of his prison, it is always Chantilly that he sees. How sad that a better poet might not have treated this charming thought! Forth from my dark tower My soul sends out its rays which pierce To this park which the eyes of day Traverse with so much difficulty. My senses have the whole picture of it: