"Poet," he said, "you have omitted a passage; read the poem as you have written it." Jasmin paused, and then added the omitted passage.

"Can it be ?" said the historian: "surely you, who can describe so vividly the agony of those who cannot see, must yourself have suffered blindness!" The words of Jasmin might have been spoken by Thierry himself, who in his hours of sadness often said, "I see nothing but darkness today." At the end of his recital Jasmin was much applauded.

Ampere, who had followed him closely in the French translation of his poem, said: "If Jasmin had never written verse, it would be worth going a hundred leagues to listen to his prose." What charmed his auditors most was his frankness.

He would even ask them to listen to what he thought his best verses.

"This passage," he would say, "is very fine." Then he read it afresh, and was applauded.