378 THE MONKEY. 



bly, and interrogated the stranger by a look. Excited, doubtless, 

 by the presence of this extraordinary being, he added these words, 

 freed here from the corrupt Latinity of the middle age. " Whence 

 do you believe that a man can draw these fecund truths, if it is not 

 from the breast of God himself? What am I? The feeble trans- 

 lator of a single line bequeathed to us by the most powerful of the 

 Apostles; a single line amidst a thousand others equally brilliant with 

 light. Before us all, St. Paul had said : In Deo vivimus, movemus, et 

 sumus ; "in God we live, and move, and have our being." To-day, 

 less believing and more learned, or less informed and more incre- 

 dulous, we should demand of the Apostle to know what good end 

 this perpetual progress was to answer? Where this life distributed 

 by zones is going to ? For what the intelligence beginning by the 

 confused perceptions of marble, and proceeding from sphere to 

 sphere, unto man, unto angels, unto God"? Where is the source, 

 where is the sea? Whether the life, arrived at God through worlds 

 and stars, through matter and spirit, redescends towards another 

 end ? You would wish to see the world on both sides. You would 

 adore the sovereign, on condition of seating yourselves a moment on 

 his throne. Insensate that we are ! we deny to the most intelligent 

 animals the gift of comprehending our thoughts and the end of our 

 actions; we are without pity for the creatures of the inferior spheres, 

 we chase them from our world, we refuse them the faculty of divin- 

 ing the human thought, and we would arrogate to ourselves the 

 knowledge of the most elevated of all ideas, the idea of the idea ! 

 the light of light! Well then, go, set out! mount by faith from 

 globe to globe, take your flight in the measureless fields of space ! 

 Thought, love, and faith are its mysterious keys. Traverse the 

 circles ! proceed to the throne. God is more clement than you are : 

 he has opened his temple to all that he has created. But forget not 

 the example of Moses. Take off your shoes before entering the 

 sanctuary, cleanse yourself from all spot, quit entirely your body ; 

 for God God is light! 



THE MONKEY. 



(Translated from the French.) 



AN Ape in Paris pass'd his life, 

 To whom they gave a loving wife : 

 He mimick'd cruel husbands too, 

 And beat his lady black and blue, 

 He broke her bones she broke her heart and died : 

 Her son deplor'd her wretched fate, and cried ! 

 The father laughed well pleased that she was dead 

 He soon found other ladies in her stead, 

 And whom he beat as soundly, as they say, 

 For he frequented taverns night and day. 



Nothing that's good from mimics think to see 

 Whether they authors or may monkeys be. 

 Authors, of all, appear the worst to me. 



