n transitions in his
career, in spite of the menace of doom, the hint of the wheel and the
gallows, his fund of joy remained undiminished, and this we see in
his verse, which reflects with equal vividness his alternate moods of
infinite enjoyment and unmitigated despair. For instance, the only two
triolets which have survived from his "Trente deux Triolets joyeux and
tristes" are an example of his twofold temperament. They run thus in the
literal and exact translations of them made by an eminent official:--

I wish I was dead,
And lay deep in the grave.
I've a pain in my head,
I wish I was dead.
In a coffin of lead--
With the Wise and the Brave--
I wish I was dead,
And lay deep in the grave.

This passionate utterance immediately preceded, in the original text,
the following verses in which his buoyant spirits rise once more to the
surface:--

Thank God I'm alive
In the light of the Sun!
It's a quarter to five;
Thank God I'm alive!
Now the hum of the hive
Of the world has begun,
Thank God I'm alive
In the light of the Sun!

A more plaintive, in fact a positively wistful note, which is almost
incongruous amongst the definite and sharply defined moods of Jean
Francois, is struck in the sonnet of which only the first line has
reached us: "I wish I had a hundred thousand pounds." ("Voulentiers
serais pauvre avec dix mille escus.") But in nearly all his verse,
whether joyous as in the "Chant de vin et vie," or gloomy as in the
"Ballade des Treize Pendus," there is a curious recurrent aspiration
towards a warm fire, a sure and plentiful supper, a clean bed, and a
long, long sleep. Whether Jean Francois moped or made merry, and in
spite of the fact that he enjoyed his roving career and would not have
exchanged it for the throne of an Emperor or the money-bags of Croesus,
there is no doubt that he experienced the burden of an immense fatigue.
He was never quite warm enough; always a little hungry; and never got
as much sleep as he desired. A place where he could sleep his fill
represented the highest joys of Heaven to him; and he looked forward
to Death as a traveller looks forward to a warm inn where (its terrible
threshold once passed), a man can sleep the clock round. Witness the
sonnet which ends (the translation is mine):--

For thou has never turned
A stranger from thy gates or hast denied,
O hospitable Death, a p