If you will refer to p. 266. vol. i. of Fouché's Memoirs, 2nd edition, 1825, C. Knight, you will find that he claims the saying to himself:
"I was not the person who hesitated to express himself with the least restraint respecting the violence against the rights of nations and of humanity. 'It is more than a crime, it is a political fault.' I said words which I record, because they have been repeated and attributed to others."
J. W.
Walsall.
In matters of rumour different people hear different things. I never heard the words "c'estoit pire qu'un crime, c'estoit une faute," ascribed to any one but Fouché of Nantes. I have understood that the late Prince of Condé would not hold any intercourse with the Prince de Talleyrand, or with the Court when he was present officiating as Grand Chamberlain of France, owing to his full conviction of that minister's privity to the murder of his son. But how is that consistent with Talleyrand's more than condemning, and even ridiculing the action?
A. N.
Verses in Classical Prose (Vol. iv., p. 382.).
—Merely as matter of information, permit me to refer your correspondent A. A. D. to the notes of Glareanus and Drakenborch on the first lines of Livy's preface, and to the "variorum" commentators on the first line of Tacitus' Annals ("Urbem Romanam ad principio reges habuere"), for a collection of examples of the occurrence of verse in prose compositions.
THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY.