_O murs! ô créneaux! ô tourelles!_ _Remparts! fossés aux ponts mouvants!_ _Lourds faisceaux de colonnes frêles!_ _Fiers châteaux! modestes couvents!_ _Cloîtres poudreux, salles antiques,_ _Où gémissaient les saints cantiques,_ _Où riaient les rires joyeux!_ _Églises où priaient nos mères,_ _Tours où combattaient nos aïeux!_ or the frenzied descriptions of the witches' dance in "La Ronde du Sabbat," or lines from "La Chasse du Burgrave"--which even Hugo called "un peu trop Gothique de forme"--or with a _Çà, qu'on selle,_ _Ecuyer,_ _Mon fidèle_ _Destrier._ _Mon cœur ploie_ _Sous la joie_ _Quand je broie_ _L'étrier_ proclaimed their attendance at the "Pas d'Armes du Roi Jean." The star of the Gothic and the medieval was indeed high in the heavens, but it paled before the full sun of Araby and the East. Napoleon had dreamed of a Mohammedan empire, and before his dream could fade Navarino and Missolonghi fired men's minds again. Victor Hugo was also the champion of Oriental rhapsody. Even in 1824 he had seen the possibilities of Oriental colour in French verse, when he wrote "La Fée et la Péri," a poem in which the Peri, who stands for romanticism, says: _J'ai de vastes cités qu'en tous lieux on admire,_ _Lahore aux champs fleuris, Golconde, Cachemire,_ _La guerrière Damas, la royale Ispahan,_ _Bagdad que ses remparts couvrent comme une armure,_ _Alep dont l'immense murmure_ _Semble au pâtre lointain le bruit d'un océan._ His collection of poems entitled "Les Orientales" was published in 1829 and took Paris by storm, provoking passionate enthusiasm and equally passionate protest. In the preface he asserts that Orientalism is a general preoccupation. "The colours of the East have come, as if spontaneously, to impress themselves upon all his [the poet's] thoughts and all his musings; his musings and his thoughts have become, in turn, and almost without his willing it, Hebrew, Turkish, Greek, Persian, Arabic, even Spanish, for Spain, too, is the East." There are fine poems in "Les Orientales"--"Les Djinns," for instance, will always be famous--but it is impossible to read the volume through to-day without considerable amusement, so very full-blooded are they. There are lofty apostrophes to Byron and the Greeks, followed by dreadful tales of Turkish cruelty, gruesome ballads like "La Voile," in which four brothers kill their sister, epigraphs like "O horror! horror! horror!" valiant Klephtes, houris, scimitars, and all the catalogue which the poet himself gives in "Novembre":