Then the 'mute e's' are disregarded:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Avec les filles | du vieux seigneur | en robes blanches.
(H. de Régnier.)
The number of syllables is of little account:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
_Des mortes douces | qui moururent là | quelque soir.
(H. de Régnier).
The hiatus is no longer tabooed, and lastly, not only the artificial rules of rhyme, but rhyme itself, is being done away with: assonance may take its place. If the constitution of the French language did not make it unlikely that these reforms should prove permanent, the vehicle of French poetic thought would become mere harmonious prose.
APPENDIX II.
THE PAST TENSES IN FRENCH.
The English praeterite being the equivalent of three tenses in French, it is of the utmost importance that a clear idea of the shades of meaning conveyed by the latter should be firmly possessed.
i.
WHENEVER REPETITION OF THE ACTION IS IMPLIED the IMPARFAIT is used.