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The sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries did not produce a single translation of the Galatea.ssss1 But in 1783 appeared a French adaptation of this pastoral by the once famous Chevalier Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian,ssss1 who compressed the six books of the original into three, added a fourth book of his own in which he married Elicio to Galatea, and so contrived a happy ending. "Il florianise tant soit peu toutes choses," says Sainte-Beuvessss1 drily. In this delicate, perfumed, powder-and-patch arrangement by the idyllic woman-beaterssss1 and Captain of Dragoons, Cervantes's novel became astonishingly popular. Edition after edition was struck off from the French presses, and the work was read all over Europe in translations: three in German, two in Italian, three in English, two in Portuguese, one in Greek. Odder still, in this form, the book made its way home again and, just as certain Spaniards who had forgotten Guillén de Castro enjoyed Juan Bautista Diamante's translation (1658) of Corneille's Cid, so three editions go to prove that, a century and a half later, certain other Spaniards who had forgotten Cervantes enjoyed Casiano Pellicer's translation (1797) of Florian's Galatée.ssss1 And there was more to follow next year. Cándido María Triguerosssss1 showed himself worthy of his Christian name by bettering Florian's example: he laid violent hands on Cervantes, suppressed here, amplified there, purged the book of its verses, and supplied a still happier ending—on a monumental scale—by incontinently marrying ten lucky shepherds to ten lovely shepherdesses. One cannot help wondering what Cervantes would have thought of this astounding performance. It was too much for the Spanish public, and Trigueros turned to do better work in adapting old plays to the modern stage. The taste for Arcadianism died away at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Artificial pastorals have, indeed, not yet recovered from a polite but deadly note published in the preface to Obermann: "Le genre pastoral, le genre descriptif out beaucoup d'expressions rebattues, dont les moins tolérables, à mon avis, sont les figures employées quelques millions de fois et qui, dès la première, affaiblissent l'objet qu'elles prétendaient agrandir." Such expressions, continues the writer, are l'émail des prés, l'azur des cieux, le cristal des eaux, les lis et les roses de son teint, les gages de son amour, l'innocence du hameau, des torrens s'échapperènt de ses yeux—"et tant d'autres que je ne veux pas condamner exclusivement, mais que j'aime mieux ne pas rencontrer." Sénancour was perhaps thinking more particularly of Florian at the moment, but his criticism applies also to Cervantes's first book.