"'Stranger,' asked the Saracen,—'with how many men didst thou come on this warfare?'
"'By my faith,' said Sir Kenneth, 'with aid of friends and kinsmen, I was hardly pinched to furnish forth ten well-appointed lances, with maybe some fifty more men, archers and varlets included.'
"'Christian, here I have five arrows in my quiver, each feathered from the wing of an eagle. When I send one of them to my tents, a thousand warriors mount on horseback. When I send another, an equal force will arise—for the five, I can command five thousand men; and if I send my bow, ten thousand mounted riders will shake the desert.'"
"YAQOUB.
Car mon père, au Saïd, n'est point un chef vulgaire.
Il a dans son carquois quatre flèches de guerre,
Et, lorsqu'il tend son arc, et que, vers quatre buts,
Il le lance en signal à ses quatre tribus,
Chacune à lui fournir cent cavaliers fidèles
Met le temps que met l'aigle â déployer ses ailes."
There, thank Heaven, my confession is ended! It has been a long one; but then Charles VII., as an assimilative and imitative work, is my greatest sin in that respect.
[CHAPTER XIV]
Poetry is the Spirit of God—The Conservatoire and l'École of Rome—Letter of counsel to my Son—Employment of my time at Trouville—Madame de la Garenne—The Vendéan Bonnechose—M. Beudin—I am pursued by a fish—What came of it
If I had not just steeped my readers in literature, during the preceding chapters, I should place a work before them which might not perhaps be uninteresting to them. It would be the ancient tradition of Phèdre, which is to Euripides, for example, what the Spanish romancer's is to Guilhem de Castro. Then I would show what Euripides borrowed from tradition; then what, five hundred years later, the Roman Seneca borrowed from Euripides; then finally, what, sixteen centuries later still, the French Racine borrowed from both Euripides and Seneca. At the same time I should show how the genius of each nation and the emotional taste of each age brought about changes from the original character of the subject. One last word. Amongst all peoples, literature always begins with poetry; prose only comes later. Orpheus, Homer, Hesiod—Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle.
"In the beginning, says Genesis, God created the heavens. And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."