Modeste kept talking to me of Childe Harold, and as I did not wish to get the worst of the argument I was silly enough to try to read the thing.

Perhaps it was the fault of the translator, but it actually turned my stomach; I was dazed; I couldn't possibly finish it.
Why, the man talks about comparisons that howl, rocks that faint, and waves of war! However, he is only a travelling Englishman, and we must expect absurdities,--though his are really inexcusable.

He takes you to Spain, and sets you in the clouds above the Alps, and makes the torrents talk, and the stars; and he says there are too many virgins! Did you ever hear the like?
Then, after Napoleon's campaigns, the lines are full of sonorous brass and flaming cannon-balls, rolling along from page to page.

Modeste tells me that all that bathos is put in by the translator, and that I ought to read the book in English.

But I certainly sha'n't learn English to read Lord Byron when I didn't learn it to teach Exupere.