This piece of stupidity complicated the question, until Sixte du Châtelet condescended to inform these unlettered folk that the prefatory announcement was no oratorical flourish, but a statement of fact, and added that the poems had been written by a Royalist brother of Marie-Joseph Chénier, the Revolutionary leader. All Angoulême, except Mme. de Rastignac and her two daughters and the Bishop, who had really felt the grandeur of the poetry, were mystified, and took offence at the hoax. There was a smothered murmur, but Lucien did not heed it. The intoxication of the poetry was upon him; he was far away from the hateful world, striving to render in speech the music that filled his soul, seeing the faces about him through a cloudy haze. He read the sombre Elegy on the Suicide, lines in the taste of a by-gone day, pervaded by sublime melancholy; then he turned to the page where the line occurs, “Thy songs are sweet, I love to say them over,” and ended with the delicate idyll _Néere_. Mme. de Bargeton sat with one hand buried in her curls, heedless of the havoc she wrought among them, gazing before her with unseeing eyes, alone in her drawing-room, lost in delicious dreaming; for the first time in her life she had been transported to the sphere which was hers by right of nature. Judge, therefore, how unpleasantly she was disturbed by Amélie, who took it upon herself to express the general wish. “Naïs,” this voice broke in, “we came to hear M. Chardon’s poetry, and you are giving us poetry out of a book. The extracts are very nice, but the ladies feel a patriotic preference for the wine of the country; they would rather have it.” “The French language does not lend itself very readily to poetry, does it?” Astolphe remarked to Châtelet. “Cicero’s prose is a thousand times more poetical to my way of thinking.” “The true poetry of France is song, lyric verse,” Châtelet answered. “Which proves that our language is eminently adapted for music,” said Adrien. “I should like very much to hear the poetry that has cost Naïs her reputation,” said Zéphirine; “but after receiving Amélie’s request in such a way, it is not very likely that she will give us a specimen.” “She ought to have them recited in justice to herself,” said Francis. “The little fellow’s genius is his sole justification.” “You have been in the diplomatic service,” said Amélie to M. du Châtelet, “go and manage it somehow.” “Nothing easier,” said the Baron. The Princess’ private secretary, being accustomed to petty manoeuvres of this kind, went to the Bishop and contrived to bring him to the fore. At the Bishop’s entreaty, Naïs had no choice but to ask Lucien to recite his own verses for them, and the Baron received a languishing smile from Amélie as the reward of his prompt success. “Decidedly, the Baron is a very clever man,” she observed to Lolotte. But Amélie’s previous acidulous remark about women who made their own dresses rankled in Lolotte’s mind.