It was by surprise that I wrested that secret from Patu.
Being at his house one morning, I observed on his table several sheets of paper covered with dode-casyllabic blank verse.
I read a dozen of them, and I told him that, although the verses were very fine, the reading caused me more pain than pleasure.
"They express the same ideas as the panegyric of the Marechal de Saxe, but I confess that your prose pleases me a great deal more." "My prose would not have pleased you so much, if it had not been at first composed in blank verse." "Then you take very great trouble for nothing." "No trouble at all, for I have not the slightest difficulty in writing that sort of poetry.

I write it as easily as prose." "Do you think that your prose is better when you compose it from your own poetry ?" "No doubt of it, it is much better, and I also secure the advantage that my prose is not full of half verses which flow from the pen of the writer without his being aware of it." "Is that a fault ?" "A great one and not to be forgiven.

Prose intermixed with occasional verses is worse than prosaic poetry." "Is it true that the verses which, like parasites, steal into a funeral oration, must be sadly out of place ?" "Certainly.

Take the example of Tacitus, who begins his history of Rome by these words: 'Urbem Roman a principio reges habuere'.

They form a very poor Latin hexameter, which the great historian certainly never made on purpose, and which he never remarked when he revised his work, for there is no doubt that, if he had observed it, he would have altered that sentence.