Only a laurel tree
Shall guard the grave of me;
Only Apollo's bough
Shall shade me now!

Far other has been thy sepulchre: not in the free air, among the field
flowers, but in thy priory of Saint Cosme, with marble for a monument, and no
green grass to cover thee. Restless wert thou in thy life; thy dust was not to
be restful in thy death. The Huguenots, _ces nouveaux Chre'tiens qui la France
ont pille'e_, destroyed thy tomb, and the warning of the later monument,

ABI, NEFASTE, QUAM CALCAS HUMUM SACRA EST,

has not scared away malicious men. The storm that passed over France a hundred
years ago, more terrible than the religious wars that thou didst weep for, has
swept the column from the tomb. The marble was broken by violent hands, and
the shattered sepulchre of the Prince of Poets gained a dusty hospitality from
the museum of a country town. Better had been the laurel of thy desire, the
creeping vine, and the ivy tree.

Scarce more fortunate, for long, than thy monument was thy memory. Thou hast
not encountered, Master, in the Paradise of Poets, Messieurs Malherbe, De
Balzac, and Boileau--Boileau who spoke of thee as _Ce poe'te orgueilleux
tre'buche' de si haut!_

These gallant gentlemen, I make no doubt, are happy after their own fashion,
backbiting each other and thee in the Paradise of Critics. In their time they
wrought thee much evil, grumbling that thou wrotest in Greek and Latin (of
which tongues certain of them had but little skill), and blaming thy many
lyric melodies and the free flow of thy lines. What said M. de Balzac to M.