Contrariwise, Sophocles makes
Oedipus sit on a rock, even at the cost of great personal inconvenience,
from the very beginning of his tragedy. All the characters come there to
find him, one after the other. Perhaps he stands up occasionally, though
I doubt it; unless, it may be, out of respect for Theseus, who, during
the entire play, obligingly walks on the high-way, coming in or going out
continually. . . There, we said to ourselves, is the classic."

But about 1828, continues the letter, "we learned that there were
romantic poetry and classical poetry, romantic novels and classical
novels, romantic odes and classical odes; nay, a single line, my dear
sir, a sole and solitary line of verse might be romantic or classic,
according as the humor took it. When we received this intelligence, we
could not close our eyes all night. Two years of peaceful conviction had
vanished like a dream. All our ideas were turned topsy-turvy; for it the
rules of Aristotle were no longer the line of demarcation which separated
the literary camps, where was one to find himself, and what was he to
depend upon? How was one to know, in reading a book, which school it
belonged to? . . . Luckily in the same year there appeared a famous
preface, which we devoured straightway[19]. . . This said very
distinctly that romanticism was nothing else than the alliance of the
playful and the serious, of the grotesque and the terrible, of the jocose
and the horrible, or in other words, if you prefer, of comedy and
tragedy."

This definition the anxious inquirers accepted for the space of a year,
until it was borne in upon them that Aristophanes--not to speak of other
ancients--had mixed tragedy and comedy in his drama. Once again the
friends were plunged in darkness, and their perplexity was deepened when
they were taking a walk one evening and overheard a remark made by the
niece of the _sous-prefet_. This young lady had fallen in love with
English ways, as was--somewhat strangely--evidenced by her wearing a
green veil, orange-colored gloves, and silver-rimmed spectacles. As she
passed the promenaders, she turned to look at a water-mill near the ford,
where there were bags of grain, geese, and an ox in harness, and she
exclaimed to her governess, "_Voila un site romantique_."

This mysterious sentence roused the flagging curiosity of MM. Dupuis and
Contonet, and they renewed their investigations. A passage in a
newspaper led them to believe