Two years after the year of terror, the poet who had made its memory immortal by his record of its changes and its chances gave to the world his heroic and epic romance of _Quatrevingt-treize_; instinct with all the passion of a deeper and wider chivalry than that of old, and touched with a more than Homeric tenderness for motherhood and childhood. This book was written in the space of five months and twenty-seven days. The next year witnessed only the collection of the second series of his _Actes et Paroles_ (_Pendant l'Exil_), and the publication of two brief and memorable pamphlets: the one a simple and pathetic record of the two beloved sons taken from him in such rapid succession, the other a terse and earnest plea with the judges who had spared the life of a marshal condemned on a charge of high treason to spare likewise the life of a private soldier condemned for a transgression of military discipline. Most readers will be glad to remember that on this occasion at least the voice of the intercessor was not uplifted in vain. A year afterwards he published the third series of _Actes et Paroles_ (_Depuis l'Exil_), with a prefatory essay full of noble wisdom, of pungent and ardent scorn, of thoughtful and composed enthusiasm, on the eternal contrast and the everlasting battle between the spirit of clerical Rome and the spirit of republican Paris. "Moi qu'un petit enfant rend tout à fait stupide," I do not propose to undertake a review of _L'Art d'être Grand-père._ It must suffice here to register the fact that the most absolutely and adorably beautiful book ever written appeared a year after the volume just mentioned, and some months after the second series of the _Légende des Siècles_; that there is not a page in it which is not above all possible eulogy or thanksgiving; that nothing was ever conceived more perfect than such poems--to take but a small handful for samples--as _Un manque, La sieste. Choses du soir, Ce que dit le public_ (at the Jardin des Plantes or at the Zoological Gardens; ages of public ranging from five, which is comparatively young, to seven, which is positively old), _Chant sur le berceau_, the song for a round dance of children, _Le pot cassé, La mise en liberté, Jeanne endormie_, the delicious _Chanson de grand-père_, the glorious _Chanson d'ancêtre_, or the third of the divine and triune poems on the sleep of a little child; that after reading these--to say nothing of the rest--it seems natural to feel as though no other poet had ever known so fully or enjoyed so wisely or spoken so sweetly and so well the most precious of truths, the loveliest of loves, the sweetest and the best of doctrines.