Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume X).djvu/277

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POEMS IN PROSE

Junius went up to one of the applauding enthusiasts. 'Enlighten me, О my fellow-citizen! what were the verses with which Julius has made you happy? I, alas ! was not in the square when he uttered them! Repeat them, if you remember them, pray!'

'Verses like those I could hardly forget!' the man addressed responded with spirit. 'What do you take me for ? Listen — and rejoice, rejoice with us!'

'Lovers of the Muse!' so the deified Julius had begun. . . .

 
'Lovers of the Muse! Comrades! Friends
Of beauty, grace, and music, worshippers!
Let not your hearts by gloom affrighted be!
The wished-for moment comes! and day shall scatter night!'

'What do you think of them?'

'Heavens!' cried Junius; 'but that's my poem! Julius must have been in the crowd when I was reciting them; he heard them and repeated them, slightly varying, and certainly not improving, a few expressions.'

'Aha! Now I recognise you. . . . You are Junius,' the citizen he had stopped retorted with a scowl on his face. 'Envious man or fool! . . . note only, luckless wretch, how sublimely Julius has phrased it: "And day shall scatter night!" While you had some such

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