"How can it be said without impiety that the truth of those things which are the work of an excellent God Is sad?"

     THE KING.  Lord-Chancellor, whose hair is white while mine is but beginning to grizzle,

     Is it not said that youth is the season of illusion,

     Whereas old age, little by little,

     Enters into the reality of things as they are?

     A very sad reality, a little faded world that goes on shrinking [(Une réalité fort triste, un petit monde décoloré qui va se rétrécissant)].

     THE CHANCELLOR.  That is what the ancients have always taught me to repeat.

     THE KING.  They say the world is sad for him who sees clear?

     THE CHANCELLOR.  I cannot deny it against everyone.

     THE KING.  It is old age that has the clear [(clair)] eye?

     THE CHANCELLOR.  It has the practiced [(exercé)] eye. . . .

     THE KING. . . .

     Sad, is it?  How can it be said without impiety that the truth of those things which are the work of a transcendent God

     Is sad [(Comment dire sans impiété que la vérité de ces choses qui sont l'œuvre d'un Dieu excellent Est triste)]?  And how without absurdity say that the world, which is His likeness [(resemblance)] and His rival [(emulation)],

     Is littler than ourselves and leaves the greater part of our imagination in the void [(sans support)]?

     Now I maintain that youth is the season of illusion, but that is because it pictures things as infinitely less beautiful and manifold and desirable than they are, and of this delusion we are healed by age.

     Paul Claudel, The satin slipper, or The worst is not the surest, trans., with the collaboration of the author, by John O’Connor (New York:  Sheed and Ward, 1945), First day, Scene 6, pp. 24-25.  I have not yet read The satin slipper, but was put onto this passage by Rémi Brague.  French from Paul Claudel, Théâtre II, ed. Didier Alexandre and Michel Autrand, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris:  Gallimard, 2011), 279-280.