OF AMBOISE.

What would the tears of a mortal produce upon them!
There, my inclination leads me to take as an altar,
One of those tombs with which the enclosure is filled.
The being whose remains sleep buried there,
Was meant to serve as an offering: an invisible hand,
No doubt, guided me in this pious design.
My choice did not fall upon those whom birth,
Fortune, or the pride of a vain science,
Had surrounded with a borrowed brilliance;
I would have feared that in them some deformity,
Some stain might have caused my offering to be rejected.
To have it pure, as the law demands,
A secret movement caused my choice to incline
Toward young Alexis, a humble villager,
Who, in piety, labor, and poverty,
Had just finished a short career.
This new Jeremiah the biblical prophet known for his "Lamentations" over the suffering of his people flooded with his tears,
These fields where, every day, he shed his sweat;
These fields where, now, his remains rest.
Our errors, our dangers were the only cause of it:
It was not his own ills; he found himself content.
An unhappy day-laborer a manual worker hired by the day; but active, patient,
Despite his misfortune, it is known in the region,
If ever, in his heart, a complaint had entered:
Everyone regarded him as an angel of peace.
The poor, frequently experiencing his benefits,
Received from his hand his own sustenance.
And when we said to him: Alexis, prudence
Would permit you to act less generously;
The sensitive Alexis replied while weeping,
Like that Indian likely an indigenous convert mentioned in missionary reports of the time to the good missionary:
See how God thereby becomes my debtor.
Such was this lamb who was chosen by me.