La Pucelle, the maid of Orleans by Voltaire

Author:Voltaire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Printed for the Lutetian Society

I This Canto, being completely different in the other editions is translated here in its entirety as a variant. It was the fourteenth Canto in the editions in eighteen Cantos and the nineteenth in thos: of twenty-four.

Which run away and leap and fall and waltz,

Are but an image, incomplete and false,

Of love's fierce fire, when once it agitates:

You know it, brethren mine, and all its states 1

But this capricious god, our light love's king,

Contrived anon a far more pleasant thing:

Betwixt Cutendre and Blois, he caused to dwell

A beauteous maid, whose aspect amiable

Had left the charms of Agnes far behind,

If, with her beauty, her heart had been kind. •

(A kind heart's worth much beauty in a dame!)

Foolish and young, Corisandre was her name.

Love's will it was, each king or cavalier,

Young bachelor or magistrate severe,

Should seek, grown foolish, being overfond

With this fair idiot a closer bond;

Servants, the people and the viler herd

Alone exempt were from this law absurd;

Gentle or kingly race one had to own

Thus to grow mad. Nor was it that alone:

The healing art, as much hemp as you will,

Brought little help and succour 'gainst this ill;

And worse and worse the brain would daily grow,

Till the fair fool would some complaisance show,

And such a time in destiny was writ

That, at the last, she might attain to wit.

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