"Are you thinking," said he, "of some more than human passage?"

"Yes," I answered.

"What passage is that?"

"The last thirty-six stanzas of the twenty-third canto, where the poet
describes in detail how Roland became mad. Since the world has existed no
one has discovered the springs of madness, unless Ariosto himself, who
became mad in his old age. These stanzas are terrible, and I am sure they
must have made you tremble."

"Yes, I remember they render love dreadful. I long to read them again."

"Perhaps the gentleman will be good enough to recite them," said Madame
Denis, with a side-glance at her uncle.

"Willingly," said I, "if you will have the goodness to listen to me."

"You have learn them by heart, then, have you?" said Voltaire.

"Yes, it was a pleasure and no trouble. Since I was sixteen, I have read
over Ariosto two or three times every year; it is my passion, and the
lines naturally become linked in my memory without my having given myself
any pains to learn them. I know it all, except his long genealogies and
his historical tirades, which fatigue the mind and do not touch the
heart. It is only Horace that I know throughout, in spite of the often
prosaic style of his epistles, which are certainly far from equalling
Boileau's."