PASTELS IN PROSE
 
 C. K. O6DEN 
 
 FROM THE FRENCH 
 
 Pastels in Prose 
 
 Translated by STUART MERRILL, 
 with illustrations by HENRY W, 
 McPicKAR, and an introduction 
 by WILLIAM DEAN Ho WELLS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 
 1890
 
 Copyright, 1890, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
 
 _ WBKARY 
 UNiv^tsiTY o* CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 
 rHE-PROSE-POEM 
 
 THE literary form known as a Prose Poem 
 is, like the Song without Words in music, a 
 peculiarly modern invention ; I believe it is 
 even more recent, and it is even more subt- 
 ly suggestive. I do not mean that poetical 
 prose has not always been written ; it has 
 not been so much written as prosaic poetry; 
 but our language abounds in noble passages 
 of it, and it will always be written as often as 
 a lift of profound feeling gives thinking wings. 
 Of course one recurs to the greatest Book of 
 all when one speaks of this, and to the sub- 
 lime passages scattered throughout both Tes- 
 taments. In a measure the whole Bible is a 
 prose poem in our version, and in the Bible 
 Job and Ecclesiastesare notably prose poems, 
 and in every prophet and every apostle there 
 are passages of the noblest prose poetry. In 
 fact, every strain of eloquence is a strain of
 
 VI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 poetry; every impassioned plea or oration is 
 a poem in prose. At times, at all times, deep 
 emotion takes on movement and cadence, and 
 the curious have often selected rhythmical 
 passages from prose authors, and given them 
 the typographical form of poetry, to show 
 how men might be poets without knowing it. 
 Indeed, some writers have intentionally im- 
 parted to their prose the flow of verse, as if 
 one should modulate his walk to a dancing 
 step, and have produced a vicious kind in 
 literature, which is as different as possible 
 from the Poem in Prose as the French have 
 cultivated it. 
 
 I do not know whether Tourguenief, in his 
 Prose Poems, which sound depths and reach 
 heights untouched by the form before or 
 since, received or gave an impulse in this 
 irregular species of composition ; perhaps 
 he did both ; but I am sure that the reader 
 of the exquisite pieces in this book will be 
 sensible of qualities and cognizant of traits 
 common to them all, which they have in 
 common with the kindred work of that very 
 great artist. It seems to me that first of 
 everything the reader will notice the beau- 
 tiful reticence which characterizes them, as if 
 the very freedom which the poets had found 
 in their emancipation from the artificial tram-
 
 INTRODUCTION. Vll 
 
 mels of verse had put them on their hon- 
 or, as it were, and bound them to brevity, 
 to simplicity; as if they felt the responsibili- 
 ty they were under to be even more laconic, 
 more delicate, more refined than they might 
 have been in openly confessing the laws of 
 prosody. What struck me most was that 
 apparently none of them had abused his op- 
 portunity to saddle his reader with a moral. 
 He had expressed his idea, his emotion, 
 and then left it to take its chance, in a way 
 very uncommon in English verse, at least, 
 and equalled only, so far as I know, in some 
 of the subtile felicities of Heinrich Heine. 
 One would have thought it must fall out in 
 just the other way; that the poet, having all 
 the liberties of prose in his right, could not 
 fail to explain and expound himself, and to 
 make the application. But no ; he fashions 
 his pretty fancy on his lovely inspiration; 
 sets it well on the ground, poises it, goes 
 and leaves it. The thing cannot have been 
 easy to learn, and it must always be most 
 difficult to do, for it implies the most cour- 
 ageous faith in art, the finest respect for 
 others, the wisest self-denial. 
 
 I do not know the history of the French 
 Poem in Prose, but I am sure that, as we say 
 in our graphic slang, it has come to stay.
 
 VIM INTRODUCTION. 
 
 It is a form which other languages must 
 naturalize; and we can only hope that crit- 
 icism will carefully guard the process, and 
 see that it is not vulgarized or coarsened in 
 it. The very life of the form is its aerial 
 delicacy, its soul is that perfume of thought, 
 of emotion, which these masters here have 
 never suffered to become an argument. Its 
 wonderful refinement, which is almost fragil- 
 ity, is happily expressed in the notion of 
 "Pastels;" and more than once, forgetting 
 that modern invention has found a way of 
 fixing the chalks, I have felt, in going over 
 these little pieces, that the slightest rudeness 
 of touch might shake the bloom, the color, 
 from them. As it is, I am certain they must 
 be approached with sympathy by whoever 
 would get all their lovely grace, their charm 
 that comes and goes like the light in beauti- 
 ful eyes. 
 
 W. D. HOWELLS. 
 NEW YORK, April, 1890.
 
 TRANSLATOR'S -NOTE Ik 
 
 ^^~^L 
 
 SPECIAL acknowledgments are due to 
 MM. Ephrai'm Mikhael, Pierre Quillard, and 
 Achille Delaroche for the prose poems en- 
 titled, respectively, "Solitude," "The Broth- 
 ers-at-Arms,'' and "The Conquering Dream," 
 vyhich were written for this volume; to Mme. 
 Emile Hennequin for the six prose poems, 
 by her late husband, selected by her for the 
 translator from among hitherto unpublished 
 manuscripts; and to MM. Catulle Mendes 
 and Stephane Mallarme for their courtesy in 
 enabling the translator to include in this 
 collection versions of prose poems from the 
 final proof-sheets of their new volumes. 
 
 S. M.
 
 LOUIS BERTKAND. PAGE 
 
 THE STUDENT OF I.EYDEN 3 
 
 MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER 5 
 
 THE ROUND UNDER THE BELL .... 7 
 
 EVENING ON THE WATER 9 
 
 MOONLIGHT II 
 
 THE GALLANT 13 
 
 THE MASON 15 
 
 THE SALAMANDER 17 
 
 HENRIQUEZ I(j 
 
 THE TULIP VENDOR 21 
 
 THE MULETEERS 23 
 
 MADAME DE MONTBAZON 26 
 
 I'ADRE I'UGNACCIO 28 
 
 PAUL LECLERCQ. 
 
 A STORY IN WHITE 33
 
 Xll CONTENTS. 
 
 THEODORE DE BANVILLE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ROSES AND LILIES 43 
 
 THE ANGELS 45 
 
 REMEMBRANCE 47 
 
 HARLEQUIN 49 
 
 THE GODDESS 51 
 
 THE INEFFABLE 53 
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 
 THE DEATH OF THE DAUPHIN . . . .57 
 THE SOUS-PREFET AFIELD 63 
 
 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE-ADAM. 
 
 VOX POPULI 71 
 
 GEORGE AURIOL. 
 
 THE HARPSICHORD OF YEDDO 8l 
 
 JUDITH GAUTIER. 
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE ORANGE-LEAVES . 87 
 
 THE EMPEROR 88 
 
 A POET GAZES ON THE MOON 90 
 
 BY THE RIVER 91 
 
 THE SADNESS OF THE HUSBANDMAN . . 92 
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS FLUTE 93 
 
 THE FISHERMAN 94 
 
 THE SAGES' DANCE 95 
 
 THE RED FLOWER 96 
 
 THE MOONLIGHT IN THE SEA 97
 
 CONTENTS. XI 11 
 
 CAGE 
 
 NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE RIVER ... 98 
 
 THE HOUSE IN THE HEART 99 
 
 A YOUNG GIRL'S CARES IOO 
 
 INDIFFERENCE TO THE LURES OF SPRING IOI 
 
 JORIS-KARL HUYSMANS. 
 
 CAMAlEU IN RED IO5 
 
 EPHRAl'M MIKHAEL. 
 
 THE CAPTIVE Ill 
 
 THE TOYSHOP 115 
 
 THE JUNK . . ? Il8 
 
 KINGSHIP I2O 
 
 MIRACLES 125 
 
 THE EVOCATOR 130 
 
 SOLITUDE : ANYWHERE OUT OF THE WORLD 134 
 
 PIERRE QUILLARD. 
 
 THE BROTHERS-AT-ARMS "151 
 
 RODOLPHE DARZENS. 
 
 THE SAD SEASON 157 
 
 ON THE PROMENADES 159 
 
 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 
 
 THE STRANGER 163 
 
 THE CONFITEOR OF THE ARTIST . . .165 
 
 EVERY ONE HIS OWN CHIMERA .... 167 
 
 THE BUFFOON AND THE VENUS .... 169 
 
 CROWDS 171
 
 XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE WINDOWS ......... 174 
 
 THE BLESSINGS OF THE MOON .... 176 
 
 ANYWHERE OUT OF THE WORLD . . .179 
 
 ACHILLE DELAROCHE. 
 
 THE CONQUERING DREAM ...... 185 
 
 STEPHANE MALLARME. 
 
 IN AUTUMN .......... 189 
 
 IN WINTER .......... 192 
 
 EMILE HENNEQUIN. 
 
 MINORATION .......... 197 
 
 THE QUEST ........... 198 
 
 A DREAM ... ....... 199 
 
 THE IRREMEDIABLE ........ 2OI 
 
 WORDS ............ 2O3 
 
 THE EARTH .......... 2O5 
 
 ADRIEN REMACLE. 
 
 THE CITY ........... 2Og 
 
 PAUL MARGUERITTE. 
 
 THE DEATH OF PIERROT ...... 21$ 
 
 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 
 
 THE CENTAUR .......... 221 
 
 PAUL MASY. 
 
 A FANTASY ........... 239
 
 CONTENTS. XV 
 
 HECTOR CHAINAYE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE GUESTS 243 
 
 CATULLE MENDES. 
 
 MELICERTE 249 
 
 THE SWAN'S 251 
 
 QUEEN COELIA 253 
 
 THE TRIAL OF THE ROSES 256 
 
 CHARLES-EUDES BONIN. 
 
 GLORIES 26l 
 
 HENRI DE REGNIER. 
 
 THE STAIRWAY 265
 
 THE 
 STUDENT OF LEYDEN. 
 
 ASTER BLASIUS sits in his arm- 
 chair lined with Utrecht vel- 
 vet, his chin resting on a ruff 
 of fine lace, like a roasted fowl 
 on a faience platter. 
 He sits before his bank to count the 
 change of half a florin ; while I, poor student 
 of Leyden, with my cap and breeches full 
 of holes, wait on one leg, like a crane on a 
 pole. 
 
 There is the trebucket that starts from 
 the lacquer box with its bizarre Chinese fig- 
 ures, like a spider that has folded its long 
 legs and sought refuge in a tulip shaded 
 with a thousand tints. 
 
 Would you not imagine, seeing the length- 
 ened mien of the master and his wasted 
 fingers trembling while counting the gold-
 
 6 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 heard him pray ; that his ringers were rlesh- 
 less, although they sparkled with precious 
 stones ! 
 
 And I asked myself whether I was awake 
 or asleep whether it was the pallor of the 
 moon or of Lucifer whether it was mid- 
 night or the break of day.
 
 LOUIS BERTRAND. 
 
 THE ROUND UNDER THE BELL. 
 
 WELVE sorcerers were dancing a 
 round under the big bell of 
 Saint John's. They invoked 
 the storm one after the other, 
 and from the depths of my 
 bed I counted with terror 
 twelve voices that fell processionally through 
 the darkness. 
 
 Immediately the moon hid herself behind 
 the clouds, and rain, mingled with lightning 
 and whirlwinds, lashed my window, while the 
 vanes screeched, like watching cranes when 
 a shower bursts upon them in the woods. 
 
 The string of my lute, hanging against a 
 panel, broke ; my goldfinch fluttered his 
 wings in the cage ; some curious sprite turn- 
 ed over a leaf of the " Romaunce of the 
 Rose " that was sleeping on my desk.
 
 8 
 
 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 But suddenly the thunder crashed at the 
 top of Saint John's ; the sorcerers disap- 
 peared, struck to death ; and I saw from far 
 their books of magic burning 
 like a torch in the black belfry. 
 The frightful conflagra- 
 tion painted the walls of the 
 Gothic church with the red 
 flames of purgatory and 
 hell, and prolonged upon 
 the neighboring houses 
 the shadow of the gigan- 
 - tic statue of Saint 
 John. 
 
 The vanes be- 
 came rusty; the moon 
 melted the pearly clouds ; 
 the rain only fell drop by 
 drop from the edge of the 
 roof, and the breeze, opening my ill-closed 
 window, threw upon my pillow the flowers 
 of my jasmine bush shaken by the storm.
 
 LOUIS BERTRAND. 
 
 EVENING ON THE WATER. 
 
 f 
 
 HE black gondola glided by the 
 palaces of marble, like a bravo 
 running to some nocturnal ad- 
 venture, with stiletto and 
 lantern under his cloak. 
 A cavalier and a lady 
 were conversing 
 of love. " The or- 
 ange-trees so per- 
 fumed, and you so 
 indifferent ! Ah, 
 Signora, you are 
 as a statue in a 
 garden!" 
 
 " Is this the kiss of a statue, my Georgio? 
 Why do you sulk ? You love me, then ?" 
 " There is not a star in the heavens that 
 does not know it, and thou knowest it not ?"
 
 10 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 " What is that noise ?" " Nothing ; doubt- 
 less the splash of the water up and down 
 a step in the stair-way of the Giudecca." 
 
 " Help ! help !" "Ah, Mother of the Sav- 
 iour ! somebody drowning !" " Step aside ; 
 he has been confessed," said a monk, who 
 appeared on the terrace. 
 
 And the black gondola strained its oars 
 and glided by the palaces of marble, like a 
 bravo returning from some nocturnal ad- 
 venture, with stiletto and lantern under his 
 cloak.
 
 LOUIS BERTRAND. II 
 
 MOONLIGHT. 
 
 AT the hour that separates one day from 
 another, when the city sleeps in silence, I 
 awoke with a start upon a winter's night, 
 as I heard my name pronounced by my side. 
 
 My room was half dark ; the moon, clad 
 in a vaporous robe, like a white fairy, was 
 gazing upon my sleep and smiling at me 
 through the windows. 
 
 A nocturnal patrol was passing in the 
 street ; a homeless dog howled in a desert- 
 ed cross-way, and the cricket sang in my 
 hearth. 
 
 Soon the noises grew fainter by degrees. 
 The nocturnal patrol had departed, a door 
 had been opened to the poor abandoned 
 dog, and the cricket, weary of singing, had 
 fallen asleep ;. and to me, barely rid of a 
 dream, with eyes yet dazzled by the mar-
 
 12 
 
 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 vels of another world, all that surrounded 
 me seemed a dream. 
 
 Ah, how sweet it is to awaken in the 
 middle of the night, when the moon, that 
 glides mysteriously to your couch, awakens 
 you with a melancholy kiss !
 
 LOUIS BERTRAND. 13 
 
 THE GALLANT. 
 
 i Y curled mustaches resemble the 
 tail of the tarask, my linen 
 is as white as the table- 
 cloth of an inn, and my 
 doublet is not older than the tapestries of 
 the crown. 
 
 Would one imagine, seeing my smart bear- 
 ing, that hunger, lodged in my belly, is pull- 
 ing the torturer! a rope that strangles 
 me as though I were being hanged ? 
 
 Ah, if from that window, where dances a 
 shrivelling light, a roasted lark had only 
 fallen in the cock of my hat, instead of that 
 faded flower ! 
 
 The Place Royale, to-night under the links, 
 is as clear as a chapel ; look out for the 
 letter ! Fresh lemonade ! Macaroons of 
 Naples ! Here, little one, let me dip a finger
 
 14 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 in your truite d la 
 sauce! Rascal ! 
 there lacks spice 
 to your April-fool ! 
 Do I not see 
 yonder Marion De- 
 lorme on the arm 
 of the Due de Lon- 
 gueville ? Three 
 lapdogs follow her , f 
 yapping. She has r 
 fine diamonds in 
 her ears, the young 
 courtesan ! He 
 has fine rubies on his nose, the old courtier ! 
 
 And the gallant struts about, fist on hip, 
 elbowing the men and smiling on the women. 
 He did not have enough to dine on ; he 
 bought himself a bouquet of violets.
 
 LOUIS BERTRAND. 
 
 HE mason Abraham Knupfer 
 sings, with trowel in hand, 
 scaffolded in the air, so high 
 that reading the Gothic verses 
 on the great bell, he levels under his feet 
 the church with its thirty buttresses and the 
 town with its thirty churches. 
 
 He sees the stone gargoyles disgorge 
 the water of the slates into the confused 
 abysm of galleries, of windows, of pendent- 
 ives, of spires, of towers, of roofs, and of 
 frames which the dented and motionless 
 wing of a tiercelet dashes with a spot of 
 gray. 
 
 He sees the fortifications cut in the shape 
 of a star, the citadel that swells out like a 
 hen in a dove-cot, the courts of the palaces 
 where the sun dries, and the fountains and
 
 1 6 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 the cloisters of the monasteries where the 
 shade revolves around the pillars. 
 
 The imperial troops are quartered in the 
 faubourg. And now a horseman is drum- 
 ming yonder. Abraham Knupfer distin- 
 guishes his three-horned chapeau, his aiguil- 
 lettes of red wool, his cockade shot with gold 
 thread, and his queue tied with a ribbon. 
 
 And beyond he sees soldiers who, in the 
 park plumed with gigantic branches, upon 
 large lawns of emerald, riddle with their 
 arquebuses a wooden bird, stuck on the top 
 of a May-pole. 
 
 And in the evening, when 
 the harmonious nave of the 
 cathedral fell asleep, with its t 
 arms extended in the shape 
 of a cross, he perceived, from 
 his ladder, towards the hori- 
 zon, a village fired by the 
 men-at-arms that flamed like 
 a comet through the azure.
 
 LOUIS BERTRAND. 17 
 
 SALAMANDER. 
 
 r 
 RICKET, my friend, art thou dead, 
 
 that thou remainest deaf to 
 the sound of my whistle, 
 and blind to the light of 
 the fire ?" 
 
 And the cricket, notwithstanding the af- 
 fectionate words of the salamander, did not 
 answer, either because he was sleeping a 
 magic sleep, or because his whim was to sulk. 
 " Oh, sing me thy song of every evening, 
 in thy home of cinders and soot, behind the 
 plate of iron escutcheoned with three heral- 
 dic flowers-de-luce." 
 
 But still the cricket did not answer, and 
 the tearful salamander at times listened for 
 its voice, and at others hummed with the 
 rlame of changing colors, pink, blue, red, yel- 
 low, white, and violet. 
 
 2
 
 1 8 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 " He is dead, he is dead, the cricket my 
 friend !" And I thought I heard sighs and 
 sobs, while the flame, livid now, grew fainter 
 in the saddened hearth. 
 
 " He is dead, and since he is dead, I wish 
 to die !" The vine-knots were consumed, 
 the flame dragged itself on the embers and 
 threw its farewell to the pot-hook, and the 
 salamander died of inanition.
 
 LOUIS BERTRAND. 
 
 HENRIQUEZ. 
 
 ^ 
 
 OR a year I have command- 
 ed you," said the captain ; " now 
 another must succeed me. I mar- 
 ry a rich widow of Cordova, and I 
 give up the stiletto of the brigand for the 
 staff of the corregidor." 
 
 He opened the coffer where lay the treas- 
 ure to be divided : sacred vases pall mall, 
 quadruple jewels, a rain of pearls, and a 
 string of diamonds. 
 
 " For you, Henriquez, the ear-rings and 
 the ring of the Marquis of Aroea; for 
 you killed him in his post-chaise with 
 a carbine-shot !" 
 
 Henriquez slipped upon his finger \ 
 the bleeding topaz, and hung on his 
 ears the amethysts cut in the shape 
 drops of blood.
 
 20 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 Such was the fate of those ear-rings with 
 which the Duchess of Medina-Coela had 
 adorned herself, and which Henriquez, a 
 month later, gave in exchange for a kiss to 
 the jailer's daughter. 
 
 Such was the fate of that ring which a 
 hidalgo had bought from an emir for the 
 price of a white mare, and with which Hen- 
 riquez paid for a glass of brandy a few min- 
 utes before he was hanged.
 
 LOUIS BERTRAND. 
 
 THE TULIP VENDOR. 
 
 o noise unless it be the rustling 
 of the vellum leaves between 
 the fingers of Doctor Huyl- 
 ten, who only detached his 
 eyes from his Bible strewn 
 with Gothic illuminations to admire the gold 
 and purple of two fishes captive within the 
 hunted sphere of a globe. 
 
 The door rolled on its hinges. It was a 
 flower merchant who, with several pots of 
 tulips in his arms, made excuse for inter- 
 rupting _the studies of so learned a person- 
 age. 
 
 "Master," said he, "here is the treasure 
 of treasures among tulips, the marvel of 
 marvels, a bulb such as only flowers once a 
 century in the seraglio of the Emperor of 
 Constantinople."
 
 22 
 
 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 " A tulip !" exclaimed the irate old man, 
 " a tulip ! that symbol of pride and luxury, 
 that has engendered in the stricken town of 
 Wittenberg the detestable heresy of Luther 
 and Melancthon !" 
 
 Master Huylten fastened the clasps of 
 his Bible, slipped his spectacles back 
 in their case, and drew the curtain 
 from the window, through which 
 could be seen in the sun a 
 passion-flower, with its crown 
 of thorns, its sponge, its 
 scourge, its nails, and the 
 five wounds of Our Saviour. 
 The tulip vendor bowed 
 respectfully and in silence, 
 disconcerted by an inquisi- 
 tive glance from the Duke 
 of Alva, whose portrait, a masterpiece by 
 Holbein, was hanging on the wall.
 
 LOUIS BERTRAND. 23 
 
 THE MULETEERS. 
 
 THEY are counting their rosaries or plait- 
 ing their hair, the dark Andalusians, indo- 
 lently swaying with the gait of their mules; 
 some of the arrieros are singing the canticle 
 of the pilgrims of Saint Jacques, re-echoed 
 by the hundred caverns of the sierra; oth- 
 ers are firing their car- 
 bines at the sun. 
 
 " Here," says one of 
 the guides," is the spot 
 where we buried Jose 
 Mateos last week, who 
 was killed by a ball in 
 the nape, during an at- 
 tack of brigands. The 
 grave has been dug 
 open, and the 
 body is gone."
 
 24 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 "The body is not far," says a muleteer; 
 " I see it floating, swollen like a water-bag, 
 at the bottom of the ravine." 
 
 " Our Lady of Atocha, watch over us !" 
 cried the dark Andalusians, indolently sway- 
 ing with the gait of their mules. 
 
 " Whose is the hut on that point of rock ?" 
 asked a hidalgo through the door of his 
 chaise. " Is it the cabin of the wood-cut- 
 ters who have thrown those gigantic trunks 
 into the foaming gulf of the torrent, or that 
 of the herdsmen who lead their weary goats 
 upon these barren slopes ?" 
 
 A muleteer answered : "It is the cell of an 
 old hermit who was found dead this autumn 
 on his bed of leaves. A rope was knotted 
 around his neck, and his tongue hung out 
 of his mouth." 
 
 " Our Lady of Atocha, watch over us !" 
 cried the dark Andalusians, indolently sway- 
 ing with the gait of their mules. 
 
 " Those three horsemen wrapped in their 
 cloaks, who observed us so closely as they 
 passed, are not of our band. Who are they ?" 
 asked a monk with dusty beard and robe. 
 
 " If they are not alguazils from Cienfuegos
 
 LOUIS BERTRAND. 25 
 
 on their rounds," answered a muleteer, "they 
 are robbers sent out as scouts by their cap- 
 tain, the infernal Gil Pueblo." 
 
 "Our Lady of Atocha, watch over us!" 
 cried the dark Andalusians, indolently sway- 
 ing with the gait of their mules. 
 
 " Did you hear that carbine-shot among the 
 bushes ?" asked an ink merchant with bare 
 feet. " See ! the smoke is curling in the air." 
 
 A muleteer answered : " They are our peo- 
 ple beating the bushes and burning cartridges 
 to distract the brigands. Senors and Seno- 
 rinas, courage, and forward with both spurs !" 
 
 " Our Lady of Atocha, watch over us !" 
 cried the dark Andalusians, indolently sway- 
 ing with the gait of their mules. 
 
 And all the travellers started on a gal- 
 lop, in the midst of a cloud of dust flaming 
 under the sun ; the mules denied between 
 enormous blocks of granite, the torrent 
 roared in seething eddies, the immense for- 
 ests bent, cracking, and confusedly, from 
 those profound solitudes moved by the wind, 
 arose menacing voices, which sounded near- 
 er, then farther, as though a band of robbers 
 were lurking in the neighborhood.
 
 26 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 MADAME DE MONTBAZON. 
 
 Madame de Montbazon was a most beau- 
 tiful being, who died of love and that 
 literally in the other century, for the 
 Chevalier de la Rue, who loved her not. 
 Memoires de Saint-Simon. 
 
 HE maid - in - waiting placed a vase 
 of flowers upon the lacquer ta- 
 ble, and arranged the wax-tapers, 
 whose reflections watered with red 
 and yellow the blue silk curtains hanging 
 over the bed of the suffering lady. 
 
 "Thinkest thou, Mariette, that he will 
 come ?" 
 
 "Oh, sleep, sleep a little, Madame !" 
 " Yes, I shall soon sleep, to dream of him 
 throughout eternity !" 
 
 Some one was now heard ascending the 
 stairs. 
 
 "Ah, if that were he !" murmured the dying
 
 LOUIS BERTRAND. 27 
 
 lady, smiling, with the butterfly of the tombs 
 already upon her lips. 
 
 It was a little page whom the Queen had 
 sent to Madame la Duchesse with sweet- 
 meats, biscuits, and elixirs on a silver tray. 
 
 "Ah, he does not come !" she said, in fail- 
 ing tones ; " he will not come ! Mariette, 
 give me one of those flowers, that I may 
 breathe it and kiss it for the love of him !" 
 
 Then Madame de Montbazon, closing her 
 eyes, remained motionless. She had died 
 of love, giving up her soul in the perfume 
 of a hyacinth.
 
 28 
 
 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 PADRE 
 
 PUGNACCIO. 
 
 ADRE PUGNACCIO, his cranium 
 out of his hood, was ascend- 
 5*S3 ing the steps in the dome of 
 Saint Peter between two penitents wrapped 
 in mantillas ; bells could be heard quarrel- 
 ling in the clouds. 
 
 One of the penitents it was the aunt 
 counted an Ave for each bead of her rosary; 
 and the other it was the niece ogled from 
 out the corner of her eyes a handsome offi- 
 cer of the Pope's guards. 
 
 The monk muttered to the 
 old woman, "Make a donation 
 to my .convent ;" and the offi- 
 cer slipped a perfumed billet- 
 doux into the young girl's 
 hands. 
 
 The sinner wiped a few tears from her
 
 LOUIS BERTRAND. 
 
 2 9 
 
 eyes; the maiden 
 blushed with pleas- 
 ure ; the monk was 
 calculating the inter- 
 est of a thousand 
 piastres at twelve per 
 cent, and the officer 
 was gazing at himself 
 in a hand-mirror and 
 curling the tips of 
 his mustachios. 
 
 And the devil, 
 squatting in the ca- 
 pacious sleeve of Padre Pugnaccio, chuc- 
 kled like Pulcinello.
 
 PAUL LECLERCQ. 
 
 33 
 
 '. 
 
 A STORY IN WHITE. 
 v- 
 
 KITE PIERROT, in his white 
 bed, dreams of sombre things. 
 
 He dreams of Columbine, who is asleep 
 near him; he dreams of her little slipper, 
 no bigger than a rose-leaf, which seems, be- 
 fore the extinguished hearth, to be waiting 
 sadly for Santa Claus. 
 
 The pink slipper seems to be waiting be- 
 fore the extinguished hearth, but poor Pier- 
 rot has no other money than the great white 
 flakes gathering slowly on the roofs money 
 that does not pass current, even with the 
 good God. 
 
 Pierrot thinks, indeed, of borrowing a few 
 golden rays from the moon, who is looking 
 3 
 
 I. 
 
 CHRISTMAS.
 
 34 
 
 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 at him through the casement, but she dwells 
 so far, that money-lender of lovers and of 
 Pierrots ! 
 
 The little pink slipper is still waiting; 
 Columbine is asleep. 
 " Arise, friend 
 Pierrot, take thy 
 guitar, that old 
 companion, and 
 seek thy fortune 
 on the roofs. The 
 air and the snow 
 will refresh thy 
 thoughts ; they 
 are now as crook- 
 ed as a crescent 
 moon." 
 
 And off Pier- 
 rot goes, skip- 
 ping from roof to 
 roof. 
 
 By the light of 
 
 the moon Pierrot skips in the snow ; the 
 chimney-pots look like great ghosts, but 
 Pierrot is not afraid, by the light of the 
 moon.
 
 PAUL LECLERCQ. 
 
 35 
 
 "What are chimney-pots for, unless it be 
 to give refuge to frozen sparrows, and to 
 offer peep-holes to curious Pierrots ?" thinks 
 the, lifting himself up on tiptoe in order to 
 see better. 
 
 Do you know what Pierrot sees ? He 
 sees a little slipper, almost like Columbine's, 
 filled with roses and lilacs. 
 
 Ah, if thy arm were longer, friend Pier- 
 rot ! 
 
 Weary, discouraged, Pierrot rests against 
 a chimney-pot. With his head 
 on his hands, and with tears 
 in his eyes, he thinks . . . 
 he thinks. . . . But medi- 
 tation brings nothing to 
 the unhappy. Who 
 knows if music .... 
 
 White Pierrot, on 
 the white roof, by the 
 light of the moon, 
 twangs sadly on the 
 guitar. 
 
 Of a sudden, he feels something warm 
 and soft brushing against him. Fortune, 
 perhaps.
 
 36 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 It was not Fortune, but a big gutter-cat, 
 all black. 
 
 " Oh, the pretty Christmas present for Col- 
 umbine ! A cat almost a child !" 
 
 Pierrot slings his guitar on his shoulder, 
 and carrying the cat in his arms, betakes 
 himself homeward. 
 
 He reaches the garret fagged out, chilled 
 through, black with soot; he runs to the 
 hearth, but, alas ! Columbine's slipper is no 
 longer there. The little slipper, no bigger 
 than a rose-leaf, has blown away Colum- 
 bine has gone ! 
 
 And, forgotten in a corner, where a few 
 hours before his love was sleeping, do you 
 know what he found ? ^ ^.,, 
 
 A black hat, blacker than his .^g 
 cat, a hat such as is worn nei- 1 . yiTiii fiii/ 
 ther by Pierrots nor poets. 
 
 Poor Pierrot, all that thou hast left is 
 a cat, a guitar, and a heart, and thou hast 
 not paid thy rent to that terrible Dame 
 Pipelet. 
 
 Fly, Pierrot, fly far from that great Paris
 
 PAUL LECLERCQ. 37 
 
 where them hast so much loved, so much 
 suffered ; fly towards the silent forests, 
 where thou canst wander like a butterfly. 
 
 Pierrot, followed by his cat, walks across 
 the country. Where is he going to ? He 
 knows not ; he goes straight before him ; his 
 stomach is empty, and his white coat is 
 whipped into tatters by the north wind. 
 But Pierrot feels nothing ; he meditates. 
 
 The hours go by. Pierrot walks, walks 
 on. 
 
 The sunset falls upon the plains of 
 snow. Over there, far away, Paris scintil- 
 lates like the firmament. Pierrot contem- 
 plates, in the silence of solitudes, the city 
 whose lamps are being lighted. It seems 
 to him that the little lights studding its 
 sombre mass reach to the stars to weave 
 him a shroud. 
 
 The moon arises from behind the clouds ; 
 mistress of ceremonies, she also looks at 
 Paris, with her great red face, but she does 
 not weep. 
 
 He stands there, scrutinizing the dark- 
 ened horizon ; over there lies all that he 
 loves ; behind that veil is Columbine.
 
 38 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 Pierrot, in tears, throws a last look at 
 Paris which disappears with his memories, 
 and with one hand he wafts it a kiss ; then 
 he resumes his crazy wanderings, escorted 
 by his cat. 
 
 No, thou shalt never be loved, Pierrot; 
 love is not captured by dreams ; thy poet's 
 nature is of less use than the pocket-book 
 of the poorest bourgeois. 
 
 Pierrot walks, walks on. 
 
 Towards morning he entered a wood 
 where the songs of the birds, his brothers, 
 attracted him, and he lay down under a 
 bush. 
 
 While he was sleeping a tomtit perched 
 on his mouth and pecked at it. 
 
 "Thou art loved at last, Pierrot!" thought 
 he, on awaking ; " the tomtit kisses thee ; 
 she loves thee !" 
 
 "She took thy mouth for a cherry," mur- 
 mured a sly woodpecker, 
 in. 
 
 BY THE 
 LIGHT O'THE 
 
 Years have gone by ; Pierrot is very ill ; 
 white Pierrot is on the point of death. 
 At the foot of a willow -tree, among the
 
 PAUL LECLERCQ. 39 
 
 grasses and the corn-flowers, two little tombs 
 lie side by side. 
 
 On one a few white roses are in flower ; 
 it is Columbine's. On the other run wild 
 weeds ; it is the Muse's. 
 
 Pierrot gazes upon both tombs and re- 
 members remembers that he has always 
 been ungrateful. He has placed roses upon 
 the tomb of a faithless one who has broken 
 his heart ; he has wept for a hypocrite who 
 had always mocked him, while he had al- 
 lowed the weeds to mould upon the tomb of 
 the Muse, who alone in the world had never 
 abandoned him. 
 
 Ah, how he remembered all ! He saw 
 his past life in a dream, and regretted that 
 he had lived. 
 
 Pierrot is very ill ; white Pierrot is going 
 to die. 
 
 He lies down among the high grasses on 
 the neglected tomb of the Muse, and waits. 
 
 He waits, before dying, for the moon to 
 light him a last time with her rays ; he waits 
 for the pale twinkling of the friendly stars 
 to guide his soul to heaven. 
 
 The angelus tolls afar, the birds sing, the
 
 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 night falls. Lying among the high grasses 
 on the neglected tomb, white Pierrot blows 
 a last kiss to Columbine, and falls into ever- 
 lasting sleep, shrouded in a ray of the moon.
 
 THEODORE DE BANVILLE. 
 
 43 
 
 A GREAT corbel of Roses and a great cor- 
 bel of Lilies both burst into flower at the 
 same time in the garden of the poet. The 
 Lilies and the Roses are intoxicated with 
 joy. The soft summer wind caresses them 
 and the sun kisses them, and makes the 
 clear colors of their corals sparkle like the 
 fires of precious stones. With a voice that 
 makes no sound, and yet that can be heard, 
 with the mysterious voice that emanates 
 from things believed to be inanimate, they 
 say, swaying in the light : 
 
 " We, the Flowers, are happy, because we 
 live in the garden of the good poet, where 
 we perform our proper functions, and where 
 we exist purely and simply as Flowers, with- 
 out fear of furnishing a pretext for classical 
 tropes and of being used as terms of com-
 
 44 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 parison. And as no philistine and no sayer 
 of commonplaces will enter the garden, no- 
 body will pretend that we have any rela- 
 tions with the winged butterflies which is 
 as absurd as to suppose any love between 
 doves and crocodiles. And we, the Lilies 
 with the straight petals and green chalices 
 we will gloriously uplift our golden pistils ; 
 and we, the blushing Roses with ecstatic 
 hearts we will bloom for no reason at all, 
 for the simple pleasure of it, without being 
 constrained to affirm the pretended white- 
 ness of red or green women, and without 
 the humiliation of being compared to any 
 young lady."
 
 THEODORE DE BANVILLE. 45 
 
 THE ANGELS. 
 
 GREATER and taller than our minds can 
 figure them, through the immense ether 
 where swarm the Infinites, and where the 
 groups of worlds seem but specks of a 
 vague dust, three silent Angels, intrusted 
 with important messages, hasten their ver- 
 tiginous flight. They are mounted on white 
 horses of light, and clad in armor of scarlet 
 diamond, to fight, if necessary, the monsters 
 and hydras. They rush forward, causing 
 the comets to flee, striking the frightened 
 constellations, and, as they pass, brushing 
 aside with their imperious fingers the manes 
 of the suns. They are Malushiel of the 
 fiery locks, who was the teacher of the 
 prophet Elijah; Saramiel, the Shield of God; 
 and Metator, the greatest of the Cherubim, 
 he whose dazzling white beard floats to his
 
 46 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 knees ; and in their midst rides the young 
 Angel Uriel. While his horse is at full gal- 
 lop the child Angel, clutching its mane and 
 bending down, picks up on the road an in- 
 significant little ball, and in sport is about 
 to fling it, with his yet feeble hands, over 
 millions of Infinites; but the wise Metator 
 arrests his arm. 
 
 " Drop it," he says. 
 
 " Ah !" says Uriel, lifting his, innocent 
 eyes, which mirror the deep skies, "is it of 
 any use, this little ball ?" 
 
 "No," answers the Messenger, "it is not 
 of much use, but drop it, nevertheless. It 
 is the Earth !"
 
 THEODORE DE BANVILLE. 47 
 
 REMEMBRANCE. 
 
 SHE and He, the two Souls, the two Lights, 
 the two blissful Spirits, Thero and Celmis, 
 transfigured by a gigantic grace, united, lean- 
 ing against each other in close embrace, ad- 
 vance with rhythmic steps through the clear 
 Paradises. They have crossed the cities of 
 diamond, whose spires press together, and 
 the high forest of violets, and the calm river 
 as wide as twenty oceans, and the bank with 
 a single rose-tree, whose branches laden with 
 flowers cast their shade upon the great wa- 
 ters. Softly ravished by the resonance of 
 subtle perfumes and by the strains of silent 
 music, they enter a large glade, whence they 
 can perceive in the infinite ether all the 
 flocks of the stars and the constellations. 
 
 " See," said Celmis, "gaze afar upon that 
 small and fugitive spark. It is the Earth.
 
 48 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 Dost thou still remember that we once dwelt 
 there ? Yes, many thousands and thousands 
 of centuries before the sacred and triumphal 
 hour, overflowing with bliss, when at last we 
 saw, in the ecstasy of the light flaming with 
 gladness, what cannot be expressed even in 
 celestial words ; before we, ever renovated, 
 rejuvenated, and strengthened, had inhabited 
 so many planets and stars ; before the long 
 persistence of a mutual love had made us 
 exactly alike, so that my form reflects thine 
 like a mirror, and the angels cannot distin- 
 guish our thoughts and the flames of our 
 hair; yes, long before that, we inhabited 
 that vague and distant point ; and we even 
 knew something there that was called suf- 
 fering; but I can no longer remember what 
 it was !"
 
 THEODORE DE DANVILLE. 
 
 49 
 
 HARLEQUIN. 
 
 E has stolen from the cat 
 his agile grace, and from 
 the pug-dog his black and 
 whiskered face. He has 
 taken from the king a 
 piece of his purple robe, from the Jew a piece 
 of his yellow robe, from the spring a piece 
 of its green robe, and with these rags he has 
 made for himself a monkey's dress, that fits 
 closely to his lithe and graceful form. He 
 has slipped through his belt of red leather 
 a lath covered with fair white skin, which, 
 before striking, tickles and caresses ; his red 
 shoes, in which there is quicksilver, trace 
 without repose the figure of a lawless dance, 
 and out of a cloud he has cut his hat that 
 forever changes its shape. 
 4
 
 50 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 Thus, waited upon like a king, skilful as 
 a Jew, ever young like the immortal April in 
 bloom, he flies through the cities and the 
 fields, amorously followed by white Colum- 
 bas and Columbines, who, seeing that he 
 has wherewith to stun, to dazzle, and to 
 beat them, adore the horrible and charming 
 monster. And he, fluttering like the hide- 
 ous butterfly with brilliant wings, embraces 
 them in his flexible arms. He amuses, 
 courts, caresses, and beats them ; and drag- 
 ging them after him in his vertiginous dance 
 through enchanted and conquered Nature, 
 he forces them to kiss his ugly dog's mug 
 and that is Harlequin !
 
 THEODORE BE BANVILLE. 51 
 
 THE GODDESS. 
 
 | HE has opened an immense 
 hole in the soft ground, which 
 she quickly digs up with her 
 skeleton fingers, and bending her 
 ribs and inclining her white smooth 
 -? "-YV? skull, she heaps together in the 
 abysm old men and youths, wom- 
 en and children, cold, pale and stiff, whose 
 lids she silently closes. 
 
 " Ah !" sighs the dreamer, who sadly and 
 with heavy heart sees her accomplish her 
 work, " accursed, accursed be thou, destroy- 
 er of beings, detestable and cruel Death, and 
 mayest thou be dominated and desolated by 
 the ever-renewed floods of immortal Life !" 
 The grave-digger has arisen. She turns 
 her face ; she is now made of pink and 
 charming flesh ; her friendly brow is crowned
 
 52 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 with rosy corals. She bears in her arms 
 fair naked children, who laugh to the sky, 
 and she says softly to the dreamer, while 
 gazing at him with eyes full of joy : 
 
 " I am she who accomplishes without 
 cease and without end the transformation 
 of all. Beneath my fingers the flowers that 
 have become cinders bloom once more, and 
 I am both She whom thou namest Death, 
 and She whom thou namest Life !"
 
 THEODORE DE DANVILLE. 53 
 
 THE INEFFABLE. 
 
 " WHAT !" murmur the humiliated souls, 
 gazing at one another with horror ; " we, 
 heavy with sins and hatred, and defiled with 
 black stains, we are welcomed, O pity ! in 
 the refreshing light of Truth, and in the rav- 
 ishment which is never to end !" 
 
 " Oh, dear Souls !" says the sweet Child 
 clad in whiteness amid the light, calm, and 
 lifting his victorious hands as when he spake 
 before the doctors, " do you not understand 
 that my pity is an ever-flowing river ? Ah, 
 do not thrill with terror, but fly with sure 
 wings towards the candor of the pure lilies, 
 and towards the immortal glory of the roses ! 
 For He who fashioned you with His hands 
 can also wash and efface your crimes in the 
 flood of His immense love." 
 
 And while the walls of iron, the sad frozen
 
 54 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 lakes, the citadels of brass, the red smoking 
 braziers, and the fearful circles of Night, de- 
 voured by the ecstatic light, grow dim and 
 vanish, the arches, the stair-ways, and the 
 pillars of Paradise mount, one upon anoth- 
 er, far up into the azure, rising towards 
 the palaces and the gardens of bliss open, 
 quivering, ravished, filling the diamonded 
 day of the innumerable Infinites ; and, un- 
 der the whitening lightning of myriads of 
 stars, the Souls, like a swarming flight of 
 blue butterflies, ascend, charmed by the 
 rhythm of the triumphal ode, up to the flam- 
 ing whiteness, where shudders and begins 
 already the vague reflection of what cannot 
 be expressed in human words.
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 
 57 
 
 THE DEATH OF 
 
 THE DAUPHIN. 
 
 HE little Dauphin is ill ; the 
 little Dauphin is dying. In 
 all the churches of the king- 
 dom the Holy Sacrament remains 
 exposed night and day, and great tapers 
 burn, for the recovery of the royal child. 
 The streets of the old capital are sad and 
 silent, the bells ring no more, the carriages 
 slacken their pace. In the neighborhood 
 of the palace the curious towns-people gaze 
 through the railings upon the beadles with 
 gilded paunches, who converse in the courts 
 and put on important airs. 
 
 All the castle is in a flutter. Chamber- 
 lains and major-domos run up and down 
 the marble stair-ways. The galleries are full 
 of pages and of courtiers in silken apparel, 
 who hurry from one group to another, beg-
 
 58 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 ging in low tones for news. Upon the wide 
 perrons the maids of honor, in tears, ex- 
 change low courtesies and wipe their eyes 
 with daintily embroidered handkerchiefs. 
 
 A large assemblage of robed physicians 
 has gathered in the Orangery. They can 
 be seen through the panes waving their long 
 black sleeves and inclining their periwigs 
 with professional gestures. The governor 
 and the equerry of the little Dauphin walk up 
 and down before the door awaiting the de- 
 cision of the Faculty. Scullions pass by with- 
 out saluting them. The equerry swears like 
 a pagan ; the governor quotes verses from 
 Horace. 
 
 And meanwhile, over there, in the direc- 
 tion of the stables, is heard a long and 
 plaintive neighing; it is the little Dauphin's 
 sorrel, forgotten by the hostlers, and calling 
 sadly before his empty manger. 
 
 And the King? Where is his Highness 
 the King ? The King has locked himself 
 up in a room at the other end of the castle. 
 Majesties do not like to be seen weeping. 
 For the Queen it is different. Sitting by the 
 bedside of the little Dauphin, she bows her
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET. 59 
 
 fair face, bathed in tears, and sobs very loud- 
 ly before everybody, like a mere draper's 
 wife. 
 
 On the bed embroidered with lace the 
 little Dauphin, whiter than the pillows on 
 which he is extended, lies with closed eyes. 
 They think that he is asleep ; but no, the 
 little Dauphin is not asleep. He turns tow- 
 ards his mother, and seeing her tears, he 
 asks: 
 
 " Madame la Reine, why do you weep ? 
 Do you really believe that I am going to 
 die ?" 
 
 The Queen tries to answer. Sobs pre- 
 vent her from speaking. 
 
 " Do not weep, Madame la Reine. You 
 forget that I am the Dauphin, and that Dau- 
 phins cannot die thus." 
 
 The Queen sobs more violently, and the 
 little Dauphin begins to feel frightened. 
 
 " Holloa !" says he, " I do not want Death 
 to come and take me away, and I know how 
 to prevent him from coming here. Or- 
 der up on the spot forty of the strongest 
 lansquenets to keep guard around our bed ! 
 Have a hundred big cannons watch day and
 
 60 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 night, with lighted fuses, under our windows ! 
 And woe to Death if he dares to come near 
 us !" 
 
 In order to humor the royal child, the 
 Queen makes a sign. On the spot the great 
 cannons are heard rolling in the courts, and 
 forty tall lansquenets, with halberds in their 
 fists, draw up around the room. They are 
 all veterans, with grizzly mustaches. The 
 little Dauphin claps his hands on seeing 
 them. He recognizes one, and calls, 
 
 " Lorrain ! Lorrain !" 
 
 The veteran makes a step towards the 
 bed. 
 
 " I love you well, my old Lorrain. Let 
 me see your big sword. If Death wants to 
 fetch me, you will kill him, won't you ?" 
 
 Lorrain answers : 
 
 " Yes, Monseigneur." 
 
 And two great tears roll down his tanned 
 cheeks. 
 
 At that moment the chaplain approaches 
 the little Dauphin, and pointing to the cru- 
 cifix, talks to him in low tones. The little 
 Dauphin listens with astonished air; then, 
 suddenly interrupting him,
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET. 6 I 
 
 "I understand well what you are saying, 
 Monsieur 1'Abbe; but still, couldn't my little 
 friend Beppo die in my place, if I gave him 
 plenty of money ?" 
 
 The chaplain continues to talk to him in 
 low tones, and the little Dauphin looks more 
 and more astonished. 
 
 When the chaplain has finished, the little 
 Dauphin resumes, with a heavy sigh : 
 
 " What you have said is all very sad, 
 Monsieur 1'Abbe ; but one thing consoles 
 me, and that is that up there, in the Para- 
 dise of the stars, I shall still be the Dau- 
 phin. I know that the good God is my 
 cousin, and cannot fail to treat me accord- 
 ing to my rank." 
 
 Then he adds, turning towards his mother: 
 
 " Bring me my fairest clothes, my doub- 
 let of white ermine, and my pumps of vel- 
 vet! I wish to look brave to the angels, 
 and to enter Paradise in the dress of a 
 Dauphin." 
 
 A third time the chaplain bends over the 
 little Dauphin, and talks to him in low 
 tones. In the midst of his discourse the 
 royal child interrupts him angrily.
 
 62 
 
 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 "Why, then," he cries, "to be Dauphin is 
 nothing at all !" 
 
 And refusing to listen to anything more, 
 the little Dauphin turns towards the wall 
 and weeps bitterly.
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET. 63 
 
 THE SOUS-PREFET AFIELD. 
 
 MONSIEUR the sous-Prefet is on his rounds. 
 With coachman before and lackey behind, 
 the barouche of the sous-prefecture carries 
 him majestically to the agricultural fair of 
 the Combe-aux-Fees. For that memorable 
 day Monsieur the sous-Prefet has put on his 
 best embroidered coat, his little cocked hat, 
 his tight-fitting breeches with silver bands, 
 and his gala sword with hilt of mother-of- 
 pearl. Upon his lap lies a great portfolio 
 of embossed shagreen, upon which he gazes 
 sadly. 
 
 Monsieur the sous-Prdfet gazes sadly on 
 his portfolio of embossed shagreen ; he is 
 thinking of the famous speech which he will 
 have to make presently before the citizens 
 of the Combe-aux-Fees. But although he 
 twists the blond silk of his whiskers, and re-
 
 64 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 peats, twenty times over, "Messieurs et chers 
 administr'es," the rest of the speech does not 
 come. 
 
 The rest of the speech does not come. It 
 is so hot in the barouche ! As far as the 
 eye can reach, the road of the Combe-aux- 
 Fe'es powders under the sun of the South. 
 The air is scorching, and in the elms that 
 border the road, all covered with white dust, 
 thousands of cicadas answer one another 
 from tree to tree. Suddenly Monsieur the 
 sous-Prefet gives a start. Over there, at 
 the foot of a slope, he has just perceived a 
 little wood of green oaks that beckons to 
 him. 
 
 The little wood of green oaks seems to 
 beckon to him. 
 
 " Come this way, Monsieur the sous-Pre- 
 fet; to compose your speech, you will be 
 much more comfortable under my trees." 
 
 Monsieur the sous-Prefet is tempted. He 
 jumps from his barouche, and tells his serv- 
 ants to wait for him ; that he is going to 
 compose his speech in the little wood of 
 green oaks. 
 
 In the little wood of green oaks there are
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDKT. 65 
 
 birds, violets, and springs under the tender 
 grass. As soon as they saw Monsieur the 
 sous-Prefet, with his fine breeches and his 
 portfolio of embossed shagreen, the birds 
 felt frightened and stopped singing, the 
 springs no longer dared to make any noise, 
 and the violets hid themselves in the sward. 
 That little world had never seen a sous-pre'- 
 fet, and asks itself, in low tones, who that 
 fine seigneur was who walked about in sil- 
 ver breeches. 
 
 In low tones, under the leafage, they ask 
 themselves who that fine seigneur is in sil- 
 ver breeches. Meanwhile Monsieur the 
 sous-Prefet, delighted with the silence and 
 the coolness of the wood, lifts his coat-tails, 
 deposits his cocked hat on the grass, and 
 sits in the moss at the foot of a young oak. 
 Then he opens on his knees his great port- 
 folio of embossed shagreen, and takes from 
 it a large sheet of official foolscap. 
 
 " He is an artist," says a warbler. 
 
 " No," says a bullfinch, " he is not an 
 artist, since he wears silver breeches ; he is 
 rather a prince." 
 
 " He is rather a prince," says the bull-finch.
 
 66 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 " Neither an artist nor a prince," inter- 
 rupts an old nightingale, who has sung for 
 a whole season in the gardens of the sous- 
 prefecture ; " I know what he is ; he is a 
 sous-prefet." 
 
 And all the little wood goes whispering : 
 
 " He is a sous-pre'fet ! He is a sous-pre- 
 fet !" 
 
 " How bald he is !" remarks a lark with a 
 great tuft on his head. 
 
 The violets ask: 
 
 "Is it dangerous?"' 
 
 " Is it dangerous ?" ask the violets. 
 
 The old nightingale answers : 
 
 " Not at all !" 
 
 And upon that assurance the birds re- 
 commence to sing, the springs to run, the 
 violets to shed their perfume, as though the 
 gentleman were not there. Unconscious 
 amid all the merry din, Monsieur the sous- 
 Prefet invokes in his heart the Muse of ag- 
 ricultural fairs, and with lifted pencil begins 
 to declaim in ceremonial tones : 
 
 " Messieurs et chers administres 
 
 "Messieurs et chers administres" says the 
 sous-Prefet, in ceremonial tones.
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET. 67 
 
 A burst of laughter interrupts him ; he 
 turns around and sees nothing but a fat 
 woodpecker perched upon his cocked hat, 
 who looks at him and laughs. The sous- 
 Prefet shrugs his shoulders and tries to con- 
 tinue his speech ; but the woodpecker inter- 
 rupts him anew, and calls out from afar : 
 
 " What is the use ?" 
 
 " How, what is the use !" says the sous- 
 Pre'fet, who gets quite red ; and chasing 
 away the impudent bird with a gesture, he 
 begins afresh : 
 
 "Messieurs et chers Administres '' 
 
 "Messieurs et chers Administres" begins 
 the sous-Prefet afresh. 
 
 But lo ! the little violets lift themselves 
 up towards him on the tips of their stems, 
 and softly say : 
 
 " Monsieur le sous-Pre'fet, do you perceive 
 how good we smell ?" 
 
 And the springs make a divine music un- 
 der the moss, and in the branches over his 
 head many warblers come and sing him their 
 pretty tunes ; and all the little wood conspires 
 to prevent him from composing his speech. 
 
 All the little wood conspires to prevent
 
 68 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 him from composing his speech. Monsieur 
 the sous-Prefet, drunk with perfumes, dazed 
 by music, attempts vainly to resist the new 
 charm that invades his being. He leans on 
 his elbows in the grass, unbuttons his fine 
 coat, stammers again twice or thrice : 
 
 "Messieurs et chers Administres .... Mes- 
 sieurs et chers Admi Messieurs et chers . ..." 
 
 Then he sends the administres to the devil, 
 and the Muse of agricultural fairs has now 
 but to veil her face. 
 
 Veil thy face, O Muse of agricultural fairs ! 
 When, at the end of one hour, the servants 
 of the sous-prefecture, anxious about their 
 master, entered the little wood, they saw a 
 sight that made them recoil with horror. 
 Monsieur the sous-Prefet was lying on his 
 stomach in the grass, as untidy as a bo- 
 hemian. He had taken off his coat ; and 
 while chewing violets, Monsieur the sous- 
 Prdfet was composing verses.
 
 VILLIERS DE LISLE-ADAM. 71 
 
 VOX POPULI. 
 
 GRAND review at the Champs-Elysees that 
 day ! 
 
 Twelve years have been suffered since 
 that vision. A summer sun shattered its 
 long arrows of gold against the roofs and 
 domes of the ancient capital. Thousands 
 of panes reflected its dazzling rays; the peo- 
 ple, bathed in a powdery light, thronged the 
 streets to gaze at the army. 
 
 Sitting upon a high wooden stool before 
 the railing of the parvis of Notre Dame, his 
 knees folded under black rags, his hands 
 joined under the placard that legally sanc- 
 tioned his blindness, the centenarian beg- 
 gar, patriarch of the Misery of Paris a 
 mournful face of ashen tint, with skin fur- 
 rowed by wrinkles of the color of earth
 
 72 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 lent his shadowy presence to the Te Deum 
 of the surrounding festival. 
 
 All these people, were they not his breth- 
 ren ? The joyous passers-by, were they not 
 his kin ? Were they not human, like him ? 
 Besides, that guest of the sovereign portal 
 was not entirely destitute : the State had 
 recognized his right to be blind. 
 
 Clothed with the title and respectability 
 implied in the official right to receive alms, 
 enjoying, moreover, a voter's privilege, he 
 was our equal except in light. 
 
 And that man, forgotten, as it were, among 
 the living, articulated from time to time a 
 monotonous plaint evident syllabification 
 of the profound sighs of his whole life- 
 time: 
 
 " Have pity on the blind, if you please!" 
 
 Around him, beneath the powerful vibra- 
 tions fallen from the belfry outside, yon- 
 der, beyond the wall of his eyes the tram- 
 pling of cavalry, the intermittent braying of 
 trumpets, acclamations mingled with salvoes 
 of artillery from the Inralides with the proud
 
 VILLIERS DE L ISLE-ADAM. 73 
 
 shouts of command, the rattle of steel, and 
 the thunder of drums scanning the inter- 
 minable march of the passing infantry, a ru- 
 mor of glory reached him ! His trained 
 hearing caught even the rustle of the float- 
 ing standards whose heavy fringes brushed 
 against the cuirasses. In the mind of the 
 old captive of obscurity a thousand flashes 
 of sensation evoked visions foreknown yet 
 indistinct. A sort of divination informed 
 him of what fevered the hearts and thoughts 
 of the city. 
 
 And the people, fascinated, as always, by 
 the prestige that comes from strokes of bold- 
 ness and fortune, clamored its prayer of the 
 
 moment : 
 
 
 
 " Long live the Emperor !" 
 
 But during the lulls of the triumphal 
 tempest a lost voice arose in the direction 
 of the mystic railing. The old man, his 
 neck thrown back against the pillory of 
 bars, rolling his dead eyeballs towards the 
 sky, forgotten by that people of which he 
 seemed alone to express the genuine prayer, 
 the prayer hidden under the hurrahs, the 
 secret and personal prayer, droned, like
 
 74 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 an augural interceder, his now mysterious 
 phrase : 
 
 " Have pity on the blind, if you please !'' 
 
 Grand review at the Champs-Elysees that 
 day ! 
 
 Now ten years have flown since the sun 
 of that festival same sounds, same voices, 
 same smoke. A sordine, however, tempered 
 the tumult of the public rejoicings. A shad- 
 ow weighed on the eyes of all. The cere- 
 monial salvoes from the platform of the Pry- 
 taneum were crossed this time by the distant 
 growls of the batteries in our forts ; and 
 straining their ears, the people sought al- 
 ready to distinguish in the echoes the answer 
 of the enemy's approaching cannon. 
 
 The Governor, borne by the ambling trot 
 of his thorough-bred, passed, smiling upon 
 all. The people, reassured by the confi- 
 dence which an irreproachable demeanor 
 always inspires, alternated with patriotic 
 songs the military applause with which they 
 honored the presence of the soldier. 
 
 But the syllables of the furious cheer of
 
 VILLIERS DE LISLE-ADAM. 75 
 
 yore had been modified ; the distracted peo- 
 ple preferred the prayer of the moment : 
 
 " Long live the Republic !" 
 
 And yonder, in the direction of the sub- 
 lime threshold, could still be distinguished 
 the solitary voice of Lazarus. The sayer of 
 the hidden thought of the people did not 
 modify the rigidity of his fixed plaint. Sin- 
 cere soul of the festival, uplifting his extin- 
 guished eyes to the sky, he cried out, during 
 the silences, with the accent of one making 
 a statement : 
 
 " Have pity on the blind, if you please !" 
 
 Grand review at the Champs-Elysees that 
 day ! 
 
 Now nine months have been endured 
 since that troubled sun. Oh ! same rumors, 
 same clashing of arms, same neighing of 
 horses, more muffled, however, than the pre- 
 vious year, but yet noisy. 
 
 " Long live the Commune !" shouted the 
 people to the passing wind. 
 
 And the voice of the secular Elect of 
 Misfortune still repeated, yonder upon the
 
 76 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 sacred threshold, his refrain that connected 
 the unique thought of the people. Raising 
 his trembling head to the sky, he moaned in 
 the shadow : 
 
 " Have pity on the blind, if you please !" 
 
 And two moons later, when, to the last 
 vibrations of the tocsin, the generalissimo 
 of the regular forces of the State reviewed 
 his two hundred thousand guns, still smok- 
 ing, alas ! from the sad civil war, the terri- 
 fied people shouted, while gazing upon the 
 edifices flaming afar : 
 
 " Long live the Marshal !" 
 
 Yonder, in the direction of the pure en- 
 closure, the immutable voice of the veteran 
 of human misery mechanically repeated his 
 dolorous and piteous observation : 
 
 " Have pity on the blind, if you please !" 
 
 And since then, from year to year, from 
 review to review, from vociferations to vo- 
 ciferations, whatever might be the name 
 thrown to the hazards of space by the cheer-
 
 VILLIERS DE LISLE-ADAM. 77 
 
 ing people, those who listen attentively to 
 the sounds of the earth have always distin- 
 guished, above the revolutionary clamors 
 and the warlike festivals that followed, the 
 far-away Voice, the true Voice, the intimate 
 Voice of the terrible symbolical beggar, of 
 the incorruptible sentinel of the citizens' 
 conscience, of him who restores integrally 
 the occult prayer of the Crowd and ex- 
 presses its sighs. 
 
 Inflexible Pontiff of fraternity, that au- 
 thorized titulary of physical blind- 
 ness, has never ceased, like an 
 unconscious mediator, to in- 
 voke the divine charity upon 
 his brethren in intelligence. 
 
 And when, intoxicated with 
 fanfares, with peals of bells 
 and with artillery, the people, 
 dazed by the flattering uproar, 
 endeavors vainly, under what- 
 ever syllables falsely enthusiastic, to hide 
 from itself its veritable prayer, the beggar, 
 groping through the sky, his arms uplifted, 
 his face towards the heavy darkness, arises 
 on the eternal threshold of the church, and
 
 78 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 seem, however, to carry beyond the stars, 
 in tones more and more lamentable, which 
 continues to cry his prophetic rectifica- 
 tion : 
 
 " Have pity on the blind, if you please !"
 
 GEORGE AURIOL. 
 
 8l 
 
 THE HARPSICHORD OF YEDDO. 
 
 UPON an old harpsichord of the time of 
 Marie Antoinette that has found its way, 
 
 no one knows 
 how, to the coun- 
 try of the Mika- 
 dos the frivo- 
 
 lous Lou-Laou-Ti 
 plays a love-song. 
 Perched upon the unsteady 
 stool, like a doll upon a 
 stand, with head thrown back, the young girl 
 sings softly. Her white and delicate fingers 
 6
 
 82 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 dance madly upon the yellowed ivory, then 
 sweep very gravely over the keys of ebony, 
 and recommence to flutter distractedly hither 
 and thither. The harpsichord, with its clear 
 and caressing voice, seems, under the witch- 
 ery of the little fairy, to find in its old heart 
 shudders, murmurs, and vibrations long for- 
 gotten. And that puffed dress of blue, flow- 
 ered with roses, is it not of a marquise ? 
 
 Oh, how their songs marvellously harmo- 
 nize ! Dost thou speak Japanese, centena- 
 rian clavichord ? Or thou, graceful Japan- 
 ese maid, dost thou know, perchance, the 
 pretty speech of France ? The pot-bellied 
 images, dozing on their pedestals of porce- 
 lain, open astonished eyes at the unaccus- 
 tomed concert, and from their stelas of 
 bronze the familiar gods wonder what it all 
 means. 
 
 And suddenly all the statuettes change 
 into graceful groups of pale Saxe, and the 
 bands of monkeys embroidered upon the 
 silk screens become groups of rosy cupids 
 that might have been painted by Boucher 
 himself. And the black hair of Lou-Laou- 
 Ti seems covered with a vapory snow.
 
 GEORGE AURIOL. 83 
 
 Eh, but forgive me; it is truly a marquise 
 that is playing there on the harpsichord; it 
 is a marquise, for she is singing, 
 
 " II pleut, il pleut, bergere " 
 
 Then the heart of the old instrument 
 warms ; its tremulous chords vibrate in a 
 supreme harmony, happy at having trans- 
 formed, by their sole charm, the interior of a 
 Japanese apartment, and at having procured 
 to a young woman, who can neither say papa 
 nor maman, the great honor of singing a 
 couplet of poor Fabre d'Eglantine, as though 
 she had just returned from Versailles.
 
 * 
 
 THE SHADOW 
 OF THE ORANGE-LEAVES. 
 
 {After Tin-Tung-Ling.} 
 
 THE young girl who works 
 all day in her solitary chamber 
 is moved to tenderness if she 
 hears of a sudden the sound of 
 a jade flute. 
 
 And she imagines that she 
 hears the voice of a young boy. 
 
 Through the paper of the 
 windows the shadow of the 
 orange -leaves enters and sits 
 on her knees; 
 
 And she imagines that some- 
 body has torn her silken dress.
 
 88 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 THE EMPEROR. 
 
 *I^ I 
 
 [After 
 
 T/wo-Foo.} f | PON a throne of new gold, the 
 
 Son of Heaven, sparkling with 
 precious stones, is sitting among 
 
 the Mandarins ; he seems a sun environed 
 
 by stars. 
 
 The Mandarins speak gravely of grave 
 
 things ; but the thought of the Emperor has 
 
 flown through the open window. 
 
 In her pavilion of porcelain, like a re- 
 splendent flower, surrounded by leaves, the 
 Empress is sitting among her women. 
 
 She thinks that her beloved tarries too 
 long at the council, and wearily she waves 
 her fan. 
 
 A knot of perfumes caresses the Emper- 
 or's face.
 
 JUDITH OAUTIER. 
 
 8 9 
 
 "My beloved, with a wave of her fan, 
 sends me the perfume of her mouth." And 
 the Emperor, radiant with precious stones, 
 walks towards the pavilion of porcelain, 
 leaving the astonished Mandarins to stare 
 at one another in silence.
 
 90 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 A POET GAZES 
 
 ON THE MOON. 
 
 [After 
 
 ROM m y garden I hear a woman 
 singing, but in spite of her I gaze 
 on the moon. 
 
 I have never thought of meeting the wom- 
 an who sings in the neighboring garden ; my 
 gaze ever follows the moon in the heavens. 
 I believe that the moon looks at me too, 
 for a long silver ray penetrates to my eyes. 
 The bats cross it ever and anon, and 
 oblige me suddenly to lower my lids ; but 
 when I lift them again, I still see the silver 
 gleam darted upon me. 
 
 The Moon mirrors herself in the eyes of 
 poets as in the brilliant scales of the drag- 
 ons, those poets of the sea.
 
 BY THE RIVER. 
 
 [After Li-Tat-Ft.} 
 
 THE young girls have gone 
 down to the river ; they sink 
 among the tufts of lilies. 
 
 They cannot be seen, but 
 their laughter is heard, and 
 the wind blows perfumes from 
 their dresses. 
 
 A young man on horseback 
 passes by the edge of the riv- 
 er, close to the young girls. 
 
 One of them has felt her 
 heart beat, and her face has 
 changed color. 
 
 But the tufts of lilies close 
 around him.
 
 92 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 THE SADNESS OF 
 
 THE HUSBANDMAN. 
 
 [After ^W^^ 
 
 Soo-Tong- HE snow has fallen lightly on the 
 
 ^ earth, like a mist of butterflies. 
 
 The husbandman has dropped his spade, 
 and it seems to him as though invisible 
 threads were tightening around his heart. 
 
 He is sad, for the earth was his friend ; 
 and when he bent over her to intrust her 
 with the seeds of hope, he confided to her 
 also his secret thoughts. 
 
 And later, when the seeds had germinat- 
 ed, he found his thoughts in full bloom. 
 
 And now the earth hides herself under a 
 veil of snow.
 
 [After Li-Tat-Pt.] 
 
 ONE day, from beyond 
 the foliage and the per- 
 fumed flowers, the wind 
 brought me the sound of 
 a distant flute. 
 
 I carved a willow 
 branch and I answered 
 with a song. 
 
 Since then, at night, 
 when everything is 
 asleep, the birds enjoy 
 a conversation in their 
 own language. 
 
 i
 
 94 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 ?- 
 
 7i-/Y.] THE earth has drunk the snow, and now 
 are seen once more the blossoms of the 
 plum-tree. 
 
 The leaves of the willow are like new 
 gold, and the lake seems a lake of silver. 
 
 Now is the time when the butterflies pow- 
 dered with sulphur rest their velvety heads 
 upon the hearts of the flowers. 
 
 The fisherman, from his motionless boat, 
 casts forth his nets, breaking the surface of 
 the water. 
 
 He thinks of her who stays at home like 
 the swallow in her nest, of her whom he will 
 soon see again, when he brings her food, like 
 the swallow's mate.
 
 THE SAGES' DANCE. 
 [After Li-Tat-Pi.} 
 
 ON my flute, tipped with 
 jade, I sang a song to mor- 
 tals ; but the mortals did not 
 understand. 
 
 Then I lifted my flute to 
 the heavens, and I sang my 
 song to the Sages. 
 
 The Sages rejoiced togeth- 
 er, they danced on the glisten- 
 ing clouds. 
 
 And now mortals under- 
 stand me, when I sing to the 
 accompaniment of my flute 
 tipped with jade.
 
 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 THE RED FLOWER. 
 
 M 
 
 [After Li- "\/ V.^ 
 
 ^ ^ HILE working sadly by my win- 
 dow, I pricked my finger, and the white 
 flower that I was embroidering became a red 
 flower. 
 
 Then I thought suddenly of him who has 
 gone from me to fight the rebels; I imagined 
 that his blood was flowing also, and tears 
 fell from my eyes. 
 
 But methought that I heard the sound of 
 his horse's steps, and I arose joyously. It 
 was my heart, which, beating too fast, imi- 
 tated the sound of his horse's steps. 
 
 And I resumed my work by the window, 
 and my tears embroidered with pearls the 
 stuff stretched on the frame.
 
 THE MOONLIGHT IN THE SEA. 
 
 [After Li-Sn-Tchong.} 
 
 THE full moon has just risen from the 
 water. 
 
 The sea is like a great platter of silver. 
 
 On a boat, a few friends are drinking 
 cups of wine. 
 
 And as they look at the little clouds 
 that balance themselves on the mountain 
 lighted by the moon : 
 
 Some say that they are 
 the wives of the Emperor 
 that are wandering above, 
 clad in white, 
 
 And others pretend that 
 they see a cloud of swans.
 
 98 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 NEAR THE MOUTH 
 | OF THE RIVER. 
 
 \After L.i 
 Ta'i-P/.~\ *H HE little waves shine in the light 
 
 of the moon, that changes into sil- 
 ver the limpid green of the water ; 
 one would take them for a thousand fishes 
 swimming towards the sea. 
 
 I am alone in my boat and it glides along 
 the shore ; sometimes I skim the water with 
 my oars ; night and solitude fill my heart 
 with sadness. 
 
 But here is a tuft of water-lilies with its 
 flowers that look like great pearls ; I caress 
 them softly with my oars. 
 
 The leaves rustle and murmur with ten- 
 derness, and the flowers, inclining their lit- 
 tle white heads, look as though they were 
 talking to me. 
 
 The water-lilies wish to console me; but 
 on seeing them, I had already forgotten my 
 sadness.
 
 THE HOUSE 
 IN THE HEART. 
 
 {After Tkoo-Foo.} 
 
 THE cruel flames have 
 entirely devoured the house 
 in which I was born. 
 
 To distract my grief I then 
 embarked in a vessel which 
 was gilded from stem to stern. 
 I took my carved flute, and 
 I sang to the moon ; but I sad- 
 dened the moon, who veiled 
 herself with a cloud. 
 
 I turned towards the mount- 
 ain, but it inspired in me no thoughts. 
 It seemed to me that all the joys of my 
 childhood had burned with my house. 
 
 I yearned for death, and I leaned over 
 the sea. At that moment a woman was 
 passing in a boat. I took her for the moon 
 reflecting herself in the water. 
 
 If she would only consent, I would build 
 myself a house in her heart.
 
 100 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 THE moon lights the interior 
 court; I put my head out of 
 the window, and I look at the 
 steps of the stair-way. 
 
 I see the reflection of the foliage and the 
 agitation of the shadows of the swing rocked 
 by the wind. 
 
 I retire and lie down on my trellised bed ; 
 the coolness of the night has seized me ; I 
 tremble in my solitary chamber. 
 
 And now I hear the rain falling in the 
 lake ! To-morrow my little boat will be wet ; 
 how shall I be able to cull the water-lilies ?
 
 JUDITH GAUTIER. IOI 
 
 INDIFFERENCE TO THE 
 
 LURES OF SPRING. 
 
 Tang-Jo- 
 
 Su.] 
 
 HE peach-blossoms flut- 
 fa ter like pink butter- 
 flies ; the willow sees 
 itself smiling in the water. 
 
 Yet my weariness persists, and I cannot 
 write poetry. 
 
 The breeze from the coast, bringing me 
 the perfume of the plum-trees, finds me in- 
 different. 
 
 Ah ! when will night come and make me 
 forget my sadness in sleep. 
 
 UBRART 
 
 * CAT m>fcwt>r 
 
 SANTA BARBARA
 
 JORIS-KARL HUYSMANS. 105 
 
 room was hung with pink 
 satin embossed with crimson 
 sprays ; the curtains fell amply from the 
 windows, breaking their great folds of gar- 
 net velvet upon a purple-flowered carpet. 
 On the walls were suspended sanguines by 
 Boucher, and platters of brass gemmed and 
 inlaid with niello by some artist of the Re- 
 naissance. 
 
 The divan, the arm-chairs, the chairs, were 
 covered with stuffs similar to the hangings, 
 with carnation fringes; and upon the man- 
 tle, surmounted by a glass that revealed an 
 autumnal sky all empurpled by the setting 
 sun and forests with leaves as red as wine, 
 bloomed, in a vast stand, an enormous bou- 
 quet of carmine azaleas, of sage, of digitalis, 
 and of amaranth.
 
 106 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 The all-powerful goddess was buried in 
 the cushions of the divan, rubbing her tawny 
 tresses against the cherry-red satin, display- 
 ing her pink skirts, twirling her little moroc- 
 co slipper at the end of her foot. She sighed 
 affectedly, arose, stretched her arms, seized 
 a large-bellied bottle, and poured out in a 
 small glass, with slender stem and wrought 
 in the shape of a vise, a thread of reddish- 
 brown port. 
 
 At that moment the sun inundated the 
 boudoir with its red gleams, struck scintil- 
 lating flashes from the spirals of the glass, 
 caused the ambrosial liquor to sparkle like 
 molten topazes, and, shattering its rays 
 against the brass of the platters, lighted in 
 it fulgurating fires. It was a rutilant confu- 
 sion of flames against which stood out the 
 features of the drinker, like those of the vir- 
 gins of Cimabue and Angelico, whose heads 
 are encircled with a nimbus of gold. 
 
 That fanfare of red stunned me ; that 
 gamut of furious intensity, of impossible vi- 
 olence, blinded me. I closed my eyes, and 
 when I opened them once more, the dazzling 
 tint had vanished, the sun had set!
 
 JORIS-KARL HUYSMANS. 107 
 
 Since that time the red boudoir and the 
 drinker have disappeared; the magic blaze 
 is extinguished. 
 
 In summer, however, when the nostalgia 
 
 of red weighs more heavily upon 
 me, I raise my head to the sun, and 
 there, under its hot stings, impassi- 
 ble, with eyes obstinately closed, I see un 
 der the veil of my lids a red vapor ; I recall 
 my thoughts, and I see once more, for a min- 
 ute, for a second, the disquieting fascination, 
 the unforgotten enchantment.
 
 EPHRAIM MIKHAEL. Ill 
 
 THE CAPTIVE. 
 
 DO not know for what superb and 
 inexpiable sin the cold Princess is 
 held captive in the hall with the 
 walls of brass. Motionless, and 
 seemingly conscious of the gaze of 
 invisible crowds, sitting upon a throne be- 
 tween two golden chimeras, she languidly 
 contemplates her insolent beauty in the mir- 
 ror of the walls. 
 
 But lo ! she arises ; and her eyes, yet ar- 
 dent with dreams that her vigils have not 
 driven away, she walks towards the metallic 
 walls. In their transparency she sees, as 
 in a luminous haze of dawn, a vague form, 
 the voluptuous form of a woman with hair 
 dishevelled. Shuddering with supernatural 
 love, murmuring words of welcome, she runs 
 with open arms towards the royal vision.
 
 112 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 But she has recognized her own splendor, 
 and her nostrils breathe in the hall the per- 
 fume of her own flesh. Then, sad and wea- 
 ry, unclasping her robes of purple, she re- 
 turns to sit and weep between the ironical 
 chimeras. " I," says she, " ever I." Around 
 her the hall uplifts its implacable polished 
 walls. No friendly flowers, no ancient ar- 
 mor. Everywhere reflected by the brass, 
 the captive alone adorns her prison. 
 
 For many hours has she wearied and suf- 
 fered, the cold Princess guarded by her im- 
 age. And now she hates herself, now would 
 she fain cover with veils the great mirrors 
 that make of herself her own eternal jailer. 
 Yet a window is open. If from that window 
 she could see the vintagers moving among 
 the vines, or the harvest-girls plunging their 
 arms in the sea of corn, or only and that 
 alone would be divine the grave ocean 
 ploughing black furrows in the crepuscular 
 fields, how she would lean out distractedly 
 from her window, and how she would blow 
 long and friendly kisses towards the coun- 
 try in travail ! 
 
 Alas ! the road that passes at the foot of
 
 EPHRAIM MIKHAEL. 
 
 the tower is forever deserted. It has no 
 beginning and no end, and the black trees 
 that border it make the solemn noise of wa- 
 ters flowing towards the ocean. In her sor- 
 row the Princess tears off her vesture ; her 
 necklaces, plucked asunder, 
 fall, gem after gem, with a 
 mocking noise ; and under 
 the shreds of her torn purple 
 she appears entire in the mir- 
 rors that exalt the useless 
 glory of her rich nubility. 
 
 At last, however, the door 
 is about to open. If the hour 
 of forgiveness were to sound ! 
 If the fair conqueror, armor- 
 ed in light, were to enter ! If 
 some lover's voice were to 
 cry : " I come to deliver thee 
 from thyself !" 
 
 No, it is a slave who offers 
 rare fruits and precious wines 
 in cups of emerald. And the slave also 
 wears robes of purple; she also allows the 
 heavy gold of her hair to flow on the floor, 
 and even more than a sister she resembles
 
 114 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 the Princess in body and visage. Moreover, 
 she is good and gentle, and speaks a gut- 
 tural language of the Orient, in which friend- 
 ly words sound like the cooing of doves. 
 
 But in the beauty of the envoy the cap- 
 tive sees only her own beauty, and her words 
 of consolation remind her only of her own 
 voice. And that is why the sorrowful Prin- 
 cess drives away the beautiful loving slave, 
 more cruel even than the mirrors.
 
 EPHRAIM MIKHAEL. 115 
 
 THE TOYSHOP. 
 
 I DO not remember at present either the 
 time, or the place, or whether it was in a 
 dream. Men and women were walking to 
 and fro on a long promenade, and I was 
 walking to and fro with the crowd, a rich 
 crowd, whence arose feminine perfumes. 
 And notwithstanding the soft splendor of 
 the furs and velvets that brushed against 
 me, notwithstanding the red smiles of lips 
 half seen under delicate veils, I was seized 
 with a vague weariness thus to see on my 
 right and on my left the slow procession of 
 monotonous promenaders. 
 
 Now, on a bench, a man was gazing upon 
 the crowd with strange eyes, and as I ap- 
 proached him I heard him sob. I asked 
 him why he thus lamented; and, uplifting 
 his great feverish eyes, he who wept said ;
 
 Il6 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 " I am sad, you see, because for many days 
 I have been shut up in this toyshop. For 
 many days and many years I have seen 
 none but puppets, and I am weary of being 
 alone alive. They are of wood, but so mar- 
 vellously fashioned that they move and speak 
 like me. And yet I know they can 
 only make forever the same movements 
 and say forever the same words. 
 
 "These beautiful dolls, dressed in vel- 
 vets and furs, who trail in the air a love- 
 inspiring odor of iris, they are even bet- 
 ter articulated. Their springs are much 
 more delicate than the others, and when 
 you know how to make them work you 
 have the illusion of life." 
 
 He was silent for a moment ; then, 
 with the solemn voice of those who re- 
 member : 
 
 " Of yore I had chosen one, deliciously 
 frail, and often in the evenings I held he/ 
 in my arms. I had told her so many sweet 
 things, that I finally believed she under- 
 stood them ; and I had tried so often to 
 warm her with kisses that I thought she 
 was alive. But I have since perceived that
 
 EPHRAIM MIK.HAEL. 117 
 
 she too, like the others, was a doll stuffed 
 with bran. 
 
 "Long have I hoped that some puppet 
 might make a new movement, say a word 
 that the others had not said. Now I am 
 tired of breathing my dreams into them. I 
 am weary, and I wish to leave this toyshop 
 where they have shut me up. I implore 
 you, if you can, lead me outside outside, 
 where there are living beings."
 
 Il8 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 UPON the jasper of the lake, a junk of 
 ebony with black sails, moving without oars, 
 opens a long wake of snow. It is towards 
 the setting sun that it slowly goes. Oh! 
 so slowly that one hardly hears the rustling 
 of its sad wings. And yet, in the calm lan- 
 guor of evening, I distinguish at present an 
 immaterial sound, that is the cry exhaled 
 by the Soul of the Junk. 
 
 The Soul of the Junk sighs, and in that 
 strange sigh "my spirit recognizes as the 
 senses separate two mingled odors lassi- 
 tude and dismay. For the Junk is weary 
 of eternally seeing behind it that wake of 
 the color of shrouds. It would fain run 
 from it, to rest yonder near the magic pal- 
 aces of red copper built by the setting sun ; 
 or else to stop silently so that the lake
 
 EPHRAIM MIKHAEL. 1 19 
 
 might spread around it like a plain of green 
 marble. 
 
 But an imperious wind swells, without 
 cease, its sails ; and with its heavy prow the 
 Junk itself furrows the wake that wearies 
 and dismays it. 
 
 Then a voice, so mysterious and so per- 
 sonal that I cannot tell whether it comes 
 from the Junk or from my soul, murmurs in 
 the violet air of the evening : " Ah ! to see 
 behind me no longer, on the lake of Eter- 
 nity, the implacable Wake of Time !"
 
 120 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 KINGSHIP. 
 
 HEN in his hand they had placed 
 the sword, and on his head the crown 
 with ten flowers of gold, when the herald, 
 clad in red tabards, had proclaimed his 
 name to the people, the Prince began to 
 sorrow. Beneath the pride of his new king- 
 ship lurked the thought that innumerable 
 generations of kings had long before him 
 received the sword and the crown. While 
 yet a child he had dreamed of unknown 
 joys, of inviolate glories, and now they had 
 thrown upon his shoulders the common 
 mantle of Sovereigns. 
 
 He reigned over the nations. Armies 
 barded with iron won battles for him, and 
 he knew that the memory of his glory would 
 blaze through the future like the light of 
 a great fire. Yet he grieved because his
 
 EPHRAIM MIKHAKL. 121 
 
 thoughts were like the thoughts of other 
 men, and they only abided in his soul like 
 the strange doves that haunt all the dove- 
 cots. And as he had heard monks proclaim 
 the vanity of joys, he thought unto himself : 
 " Sorrow alone is infinite. I will have a 
 sorrow greater than the sorrows of men, a 
 sorrow that no one has known." 
 
 Then he commanded his men-at-arms to 
 blow their trumpets through the town; and 
 on the public square was built a scaffold, 
 hung with black velvet. When the 
 people were .assembled, the execu- 
 tioner's attendants, with bloody tu- 
 nics, led upon the scaffold the King's 
 little sweetheart, his friend, his best 
 beloved. She was weeping and call- 
 ing upon her lord, and she was so 
 fair in her divine despair that she 
 felt herself for an instant adored by 
 thousands of men. But the King ap- 
 peared upon the public square and 
 ascended the steps of the scaffold 
 in his sky-blue mantle, embroidered 
 with a flight of heraldic eagles in gold. 
 Implacable and silent, he forced the dear
 
 122 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 victim to kneel upon the velvet, and seizing 
 in his royal hands the axe of punishment, 
 he cut off the beloved head at one blow. 
 
 For days and nights in the oratory of the 
 palace, with his forehead prone on the steps 
 of the altar, he implored the Queen of An- 
 gels : " Our Lady of the Afflicted, allow that 
 my sorrow may be made visible as the heart, 
 pierced with the seven mystic glaves, is vis- 
 ible in your images. And therein will be 
 the sign of expiation." Now the Virgin 
 hearkened unto him. 
 
 He wandered over the countries of the 
 earth, and everywhere, as he passed, the trees 
 took on the tints of the trees of autumn. 
 The church -bells began to toll of them- 
 selves, and the walls of the cities veiled 
 themselves in mortuary draperies. And it 
 was not all a vain pageantry of funerals ; 
 but with every sound of the bells, with every 
 mournful color, corresponded in the soul of 
 the King a thought of sadness. His sor- 
 row had been made visible according to his 
 prayer, and now, having become material, it 
 filled the universe. 
 
 But he was proud as a god of suffering
 
 EPHRAIM MIKHAKL. 123 
 
 what no one had suffered before, and he 
 walked in the glory of his grief, mournful 
 and splendid as a black sun. 
 
 And as he went thus, causing night and 
 winter wherever he passed, he reached a 
 great plain bordered by rigid trees. There 
 twelve elders were sitting in a circle, motion- 
 less, upon their seats of stone, and mute as 
 the statues that guard the tombs. The King 
 advanced towards them and cried, in haugh- 
 ty tones: "Behold me, elders, that before 
 dying, ye may see him that has known a 
 new sorrow." 
 
 But the elders arose together with loud 
 cries, and one of them answered the King : 
 " Man, do not boast before us of feeling 
 what no one has felt, for we are the Months 
 of the Year, and the Master has established 
 us to chasten those who have disclaimed the 
 happiness of the crowds. Since thou hast 
 sinned from pride, thou shall not be lib- 
 erated from life ; but, tortured by the in- 
 effable shame of ignoring the Unknown, 
 thou shalt remain to the end of time our 
 prisoner the prisoner of the Months of 
 the Year.'"
 
 124 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 Then, as in the distant heavens rang the 
 trump of archangels, the King felt his crown 
 fall and his will expire, and he entered the 
 circle of the twelve eternal Jailers.
 
 EPHRA1M MIKHAEL. 125 
 
 MIRACLES. 
 
 IT is in a rich and ancient city, on the 
 shores of a cerulean ocean, in a strange 
 city where, among obelisks and pylons, ma- 
 chines of war press and thunder. From a 
 high terrace of marble, the poet Azahel con- 
 templates the swarming of ambitious sails 
 in the harbor. In the peaceful twilight, un- 
 der the sky vibrant with the flight of swal- 
 lows, he meditates upon the uselessness of 
 the hours. 
 
 For he knows that in that city, where live 
 wise men and sages and doctors of the law, 
 he alone has recognized the infirmity of 
 Reason, and he thinks of those who bear 
 through the ages their ridiculous common- 
 sense like a precious and heavy reliquary; 
 and because he has disclaimed it, he glori- 
 fies himself in his heart.
 
 126 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 And lo ! among the crowd by the harbor, 
 appears a stranger clad in a woollen man- 
 tle of noble folds and of ancient pattern. 
 His eyes, like antique gems, seem to pre- 
 serve the memory of primordial visions, and 
 under his feet the stones quake as with 
 dread. 
 
 When the poet Azahel had descended 
 among the crowd, the stranger lifted his 
 arms to heaven ; and now he cries out, in 
 tones that resound like the trumpets of the 
 temples : " Men, I am a prophet of God. I 
 have come to proclaim the Word, and those 
 that will follow me I will lead, walking on 
 the waves of the sea, towards the veritable 
 Land of Promise." Then from the crowd 
 arises a murmur of disappointment. Young 
 men glance from the prophet to the sky 
 where the vesper mist is thickening, and they 
 pass on with negligent steps. The wise men 
 watch in silence; and the merchants, having 
 cast a last look at their good ships anchored 
 in the peaceful harbor, shrug their shoulders 
 and depart. A doctor of the law, however, 
 has said with a smile : " Master, if thou art 
 the envoy of God, show us some sign. Veri-
 
 EPHRAIM MIKHAEL. 127 
 
 ly, couldst thou not, after the rite of the 
 prophets, heal the dumb and blind !" 
 
 Near the harbor were two men the one 
 blind, the other dumb. The prophet laid 
 his hands upon their foreheads, and the 
 blind man opened his eyes, and the dumb 
 man spake in a loud voice. The prophet 
 asked : " Is the sign sufficient, and do you 
 wish to follow me ?" But the crowd re- 
 mains motionless, the blind man shakes his 
 head, and the dumb man cries out with his 
 newly-found voice : "I do not believe thee !" 
 
 The stranger therefore extends his con- 
 fident hand towards the horizon which is 
 now full of night, and repeats the sacred 
 words of Genesis : " Let there be light !" and 
 lo ! in the Orient bursts a summer dawn. 
 
 Disconcerted, the doctors of the law con- 
 sult with the wise men. But no one ad- 
 vances towards the sea. 
 
 Then, with the sadness of a vanquished 
 angel, the great stranger goes and sits dream- 
 ily on the steps of an ancient temple, before 
 the doors that have been closed for thou- 
 sands of years. The crowd scatters little 
 by little, the wise men and the doctors aban-
 
 128 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 don the harbor, and as they return home 
 they feel less troubled, because the natural 
 night has returned. Azahel alone has re- 
 mained near the closed temple, and he gazes 
 upon the man come from yonder. If he 
 were truly the Envoy ! Oh, to recognize 
 him, to bow before him, to follow him tow- 
 ards the chosen land ! But the spirit of 
 Azahel is obscured by earthly ideas, and he 
 can only think that the man is very fair be- 
 cause of his high stature and of his godly 
 looks. 
 
 Suddenly the elder arises and walks tow- 
 ards the poet : " Azahel, thou hast loved a 
 virgin who is dead. I will give her back to 
 thee." Immediately, wrapped in funereal 
 robes and coming forth blushing from death 
 as from the coolness of a morning sea, a 
 young woman appears. Smiling and for- 
 getful of the divine secrets of the tomb, she 
 opens her arms to her lover. 
 
 But he flies in terror through the silent 
 streets; among the pylons and the obelisks 
 and the images of the forgotten gods he 
 flies, blinded by the miracle like a night- 
 bird frightened by torches. And it is only
 
 EPHRAIM MIKHAEL. 129 
 
 when he finds himself once more on the 
 peaceful terrace of marble that he dares di- 
 rect his gaze towards the harbor haunted 
 by prodigies. 
 
 At that moment a mysterious light shines 
 towards the Orient. Upon the pacified 
 ocean the great biblical elder passes calm- 
 ly, and the reflection of stars in the water 
 borders his way with a double row of dia- 
 monds. Now Azahel would fain arise and 
 walk forth also on the miraculous waves. 
 But he feels himself so heavy with reason 
 that he cannot even lift his shameful hands 
 towards Envoy who returns. 
 9
 
 130 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 THE EVOCATOR. 
 
 As the army of the Conqueror issued from 
 the forest, the barbaric archers riding in the 
 van cried out that they saw in the distance 
 an immense and bizarre city. Yonder, in 
 the ruddy haze of the Occident, arose high 
 towers of marble, and the blood of the dy- 
 ing day flowed as in sacred patens upon ter- 
 races paved with gold. 
 
 But when the army had come nearer they 
 saw that the city since centuries, doubtless 
 was silent and deserted. Then the sol- 
 diers, lowering their pikes, entered peacea- 
 bly, and they marched long, by grass-grown 
 walls and closed doors, through the solemn 
 streets. At last, upon a square, before a 
 colossal temple, an old man came forth to 
 meet them. " Strangers," said he, " you 
 have come to an austere spot. If you are
 
 EPHRAIM MIKHAEL. 131 
 
 impure and covetous, go hence towards the 
 proud cities of Asia. You will find here no 
 treasures to rifle nor virgins to violate. Go 
 hence, for this is the city of the gods. Yet 
 if you still preserve, O warriors from 
 happy lands, some care for the distant 
 heaven, come towards the lamps that no 
 earthly wind can extinguish, in the sanct- 
 uary, where, like an august lion made 
 captive, the Divinity offers itself to the 
 gaze of men." 
 
 The soldiers murmured, weary 
 and surprised ; yet, on account 
 of the long march accomplished, 
 they resolved to pass the night 
 by the fires lighted in the super- 
 natural city. But they could not 
 sleep, because the thought of the neighboring 
 god troubled them. 
 
 And thus, little by little, the temple was 
 filled with an insolent crowd awaiting the 
 divine vision. Within stood men of all 
 conditions : imperious soldiers, timid army 
 varlets, ironical scribes, a sage from the 
 shores of the Ganges, emaciated by fear 
 ful fasts, clad by everlasting alms, whom
 
 IJ2 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 out of vanity the Conqueror dragged in 
 his train. 
 
 When the day appeared, all these men 
 came out from the temple, trembling with 
 meditations ; and on the square they ques- 
 tioned one another anxiously. Some had 
 seen strange figures, grimacing and cruel, 
 half veiled in bloody mists ; others an- 
 nounced grotesque gods, with enormous bel- 
 lies, with stupid and joyous faces. A few 
 also spoke of a smiling god who pointed with 
 his hand to the world, and then moved his 
 arms, as though to excuse himself. 
 
 But the silent sage re-entered the temple 
 and questioned the old man: "Why, O re- 
 vealer of gods, hast thou not granted to all 
 these men the same vision ? I have watched 
 throughout the night with them, and amid a 
 music of paradise, I saw an ineffable dawn 
 of splendor and charity burst forth and 
 spread over the world. Why, then, hast thou 
 lied to them, why have not my brethren of 
 the army known the dream of God ?" 
 
 " Stranger, you have all seen the God. 
 Dost thou not know that the heavens, dream- 
 ed of and perhaps unreal, are but a vast
 
 EPHRAIM MIKHAEL. 133 
 
 mirror where every one sees himself invested 
 with immortality ? They have seen them- 
 selves in the heavens and they blaspheme. 
 Listen to what they say." 
 
 Then, by a window, the sage looked out. 
 Irritated by the ridiculous and blood-guilty 
 gods, the mob was preparing torches with 
 which to fire the temple, and was leaping 
 forward with laughter and insults. And 
 now to the hearing of the sage the proffered 
 syllables yielded a new meaning; and in a 
 marvellous language of primitive times, be- 
 come suddenly intelligible, he heard the 
 blasphemous confess their sins and their 
 crimes, and proclaim before the holy doors 
 their own inanity.
 
 134 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 SOLITUDE. 
 
 order to fulfil the behest of 
 
 [ANYWHERE fe^rfj^^r some distant king, the servants 
 OUT OF THE fe exposed the child in a place of 
 
 rocks and forests. The waif was laid upon 
 a stone among monstrous grasses. Cruel 
 flowers around him opened their red and 
 hostile chalices like the maws of savage 
 beasts. But upon that very night began the 
 year of Jubilee, and the priests, having as- 
 sembled in the forest, discovered the child. 
 One of the hierophants, leaning over the 
 stone, prophesied. "This child," said he, 
 " is of noble origin. He shall be delivered 
 from all evil approach." The priests chant- 
 ed the accustomed hymns, and they went 
 together to confide the child to some shep- 
 herds. Men blowing into conchs preceded 
 the train ; they wore vestments of mourn-
 
 EPHRAIM MIKHAEL. 135 
 
 ing, and turning towards the plains, they 
 made the air resound with tumultuous, de- 
 spairing calls. But from the depths of the 
 thickets the trumpeters, in white robes, an- 
 swered with rich fanfares, and their straight 
 slender trumpets arose in the dawn like great 
 lilies of gold. 
 
 In the shepherds' village the child was 
 named Stellus. He grew up wild and dis- 
 dainful, yet within him lurked a desultory 
 tenderness. He opened his arms to the 
 children, he ran towards the mothers and 
 embraced them like a son. But of a sud- 
 den he would stop, as though wounded by 
 some unknown sorrow ; he would bow his 
 head and fly to shadowy retreats by the 
 long, deserted roads. The other children 
 cast stones at him, beat him with branches. 
 The old men said, " They are right ; thou 
 shouldst play with thy brothers." Docile, 
 he would then try to follow those of his own 
 age when they roamed through the gardens, 
 stealing fruits or plundering hives ; and in 
 the sunny fields he would suddenly feel like 
 weeping and running to some hiding-place, 
 he knew not why.
 
 136 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 Often did he escape from the roads, away 
 from the villages, into the forest where of 
 yore they had found him. A great peace 
 would then descend upon him : the friend- 
 ly branches caressed him with their sweet 
 freshness ; it seemed to him that healing 
 hands were laid upon his brow. Silently 
 he would sit in a sunny glade by the edge 
 of a lake so deeply impregnated with an- 
 cient light that it seemed to hold between 
 its shores marvellous waters of cinnabar 
 and gold. Stellus would remain there, with- 
 out dreams, without desires, content with 
 listening to the wind. At first he could 
 only hear a monotonous and confused noise, 
 spreading over the whole country. But 
 soon he learned to distinguish the rustling 
 of each tree, of each branch. Then he dis- 
 cerned wondrous and supernatural sounds, 
 like songs of fairy spinners, like sighs of ce- 
 lestial flutes. And those rumors of the wind 
 exerted a miraculous power over him. As 
 he listened, Stellus felt new thoughts surg- 
 ing within him. He understood, he knew; 
 he saw that the forest was alive; he felt 
 the ineffable soul of the trees, the grasses,
 
 EPHRAIM MIKHAEL. 137 
 
 and the waters ; and sounds fallen from 
 the stars taught him divine things. Yet he 
 felt no wonder. That revelation seemed 
 to him but an awakened memory, and ev- 
 ery thought that entered his brain was like 
 a returning exile. He listened peacefully, 
 and it seemed to him quite simple that those 
 teachings should thus be brought to him 
 from heaven by the winds, like flowers blown 
 from the gardens of the night. 
 
 But when, at last, the breezes were silent, 
 an immense sadness arose in the soul of the 
 child. After the revealing words which the 
 wind had blown him, he felt himself still 
 more estranged from men. An imperious 
 desire sometimes came over him to repeat 
 to others what he had learned from the 
 forest. But he felt that he would speak 
 in vain, and he remained painfully silent. 
 When he returned among his companions 
 he was seized with a strange uneasiness. 
 Every day he tarried longer in the forest ; 
 during a whole summer he lived among the 
 trees. He remained there, wild and loving, 
 regretting his companions, yet not daring to 
 return among them.
 
 138 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 Mists began to tarnish the crepuscules ; 
 a long thrill of sadness agitated the branch- 
 es; the trees leaned backward, startled and 
 trembling, as though recoiling with terror 
 before the approaching winter ; the flocks, 
 left to browse in the spare grass, grew lean 
 and bleated lamentably. 
 
 A man came from the village to seek news 
 of the tarrying shepherd. Stellus confided 
 to him his sorrow ; he besought him to leave 
 him in the forest. The man listened with 
 the look of one who understands. " I see 
 what thou yearnest after," he said ; " the 
 priests have said that thou wert of noble 
 origin. That means, no doubt, that thou 
 wert not made to be a shepherd. Go forth 
 into the world in quest of glorious advent- 
 ures. Be a warrior." 
 
 Stellus believed in the man. " Yes," he 
 thought, " perhaps I might be happy among 
 the warriors." Having climbed upon a rock, 
 he saw afar in the night the restless fires of 
 a camp. He left his flocks and went forth 
 through rough paths towards the field of 
 battle. The calls of the sentinels upon 
 the mountains guided his steps ; trumpets
 
 EPHRAIM MIKHAEL. 139 
 
 sounded yonder, as though to give him wel- 
 come. 
 
 Beneath a casque surmounted by a gold- 
 en eagle, under his armor bristling with 
 spikes, Stellus fought with the battle-axe 
 and the sword. He served a conquering 
 king whose army triumphantly advanced, 
 odious to the nations. Such hatred mut- 
 tered behind the invaders that they de- 
 spatched their own wounded to save them 
 from the expiatory tortures which the en- 
 emy would doubtless have inflicted upon 
 them. And that no one might be capt- 
 ured alive, the soldiers, when in battle, 
 fastened themselves to one another with 
 chains. 
 
 But a mysterious force impelled Stellus 
 to fight alone. In vain did he wish to come 
 nearer to his brethren at-arms ; an invisible 
 power drove him away. During the nights 
 of alarm he galloped alone towards the 
 posts of peril. He was the solitary torch- 
 bearer who explored the barbaric woods ; 
 he was the sole defender of the rear-guards, 
 he who was abandoned, during the flight of 
 kings and captains, as a martial offering to
 
 140 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 the gods of war. Yet how he yearned to 
 mingle with his companions, to drain with 
 them, in the stolen cups, the wine of con- 
 quest ! How he envied those who, on the 
 eve of massacres, slept together like brothers 
 under the flapping canvas of the tents ! But 
 he never had a companion. 
 
 He had thought, in the days of the first 
 battles : " Doubtless, being of noble origin, 
 I cannot be happy among that rabble of 
 soldiers. I shall only be happy when I 
 walk among the chiefs." He accomplished 
 such exploits that the kings greeted him 
 as their equal. He received the banner 
 and the lance of gold, and his place was 
 among the princes of the army. But in 
 the eager procession of young sovereigns, 
 the old sorrow surprised him anew ; in the 
 squares of the conquered capitals which 
 he received as his appanage, he felt him- 
 self, as in the shepherds' village, a passing 
 stranger. 
 
 As he was sorrowing, an old captain who 
 admired him said : " I know what thou de- 
 sirest. What thou missest, Stellus, is love. 
 Go forth into the world and seek for some
 
 EPHRAIM MIKHAEL. 141 
 
 fair princess. Be a lover." Stellus be- 
 lieved in the captain. He strewed the 
 pommel of his saddle with thick sprays of 
 lilac; he wound full -leaved vine branches 
 around his lance, and he departed in quest 
 of love. Birds from fairy-land, dazzling the 
 air with their burnished wings, flew in front 
 of the horseman. Over the rivers and the 
 fields floated nuptial perfumes. 
 
 In a land of sunlight and of gushing wa- 
 ters Stellus found the fair princess. She 
 was standing by a fountain, drawing water 
 with a silver jug. Her pale and supple 
 arms were upon the margin. She began to 
 laugh, the young girl, because some doves 
 that had suddenly alighted before her splash- 
 ed her face with drops of liquid light when 
 they folded their wings. When Stellus 
 came near she took to flight. She ran over 
 the plain, and laughed as she ran. Now 
 and then she stopped, hastily plucked red 
 roses and white roses, and threw them iron- 
 ically to the horseman. Her tawny hair 
 had become undone, and flowed broadly 
 upon her shoulders like a huntress's mantle 
 cut out of the skin of a young tigress.
 
 142 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 At last Stellus overtook her, wound his 
 arms around her, lifted her on his horse. 
 She was laughing still. "Drop the reins," 
 she said. Softly, with caressing words, she 
 guided the tamed charger. By an alley 
 sanded with blue powder she led Stellus 
 to her palace, and that night the timbrels 
 and the sistrums announced princely be- 
 trothals. 
 
 The nuptial garlands had not yet faded 
 on the balconies of the palace before Stellus 
 came and sat dolorously in the gardens. 
 He lifted his plaintive hands to heaven and 
 he murmured : " Who will come to assist 
 me ? Who will give me counsel ?" Then 
 he saw under a tree a venerable man of 
 sacerdotal aspect, who was listening to him. 
 " Father," said Stellus, " if thou be the sav- 
 ior sent to me, if thou knowest the hidden 
 things, tell me why I am forever solitary. 
 Tell me why, as a child, I could not play 
 with children ; why I could not reveal to 
 young men the words of the wind, nor laugh 
 with soldiers, nor sleep blissfully by the side 
 of my bride ?" 
 
 In a dreamy voice, the aged man answer-
 
 EPHRAIM MIKHAEL. 143 
 
 ed : " Stellus, Stellus, because the enchant- 
 ment of kisses has not overcome thee, be- 
 cause thy heart, unalterably noble, can find 
 no solace in ordinary joys, I will speak. 
 Thou sufferest, Stellus, because thou art un- 
 like other men, because thou canst know 
 neither their sorrows nor their hopes. But 
 learn now: all men are like thee solitary 
 monsters. Thou rememberest, Stellus, when 
 thou wert a little child among the shep- 
 herds, thou couldst not tell the bucks from 
 the rams, nor the lambs from the kids ; and 
 when thou heardst afar a sound of bleating, 
 thou didst say : ' The beasts yonder are 
 crying.' As the buck differs from the ram, 
 so does one man differ from another man ; 
 and over the plains of the earth there is but 
 a disorderly flock of mutually unknown and 
 hostile beings. Stellus, the far-seeing eyes 
 of the Initiated perceive mysterious differ- 
 ences where the eyes of the vulgar can only 
 see evident similitudes. But mankind ig- 
 nores the horrible, the divine truth. They 
 think themselves alike one to the other. 
 They talk together, the fools ! as though 
 speech could fly from soul to soul. They
 
 144 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 gaze at one another as though they were 
 not divided by insuperable walls of dark- 
 ness. 
 
 " Thou, Stellus, hast dimly understood 
 that thou wert alone of thy race, and for 
 that reason thou hast suffered. Thou didst 
 appear to thyself different from other men, 
 and thou couldst not resign thyself to thy 
 nobility. Thou soughtest refuge in the for- 
 ests because thy companions were strangers 
 to thee, and thou didst weep there because 
 thou hadst lost thy companions. Thou 
 hast loved solitude in the wilds because 
 thou sufferedst from being solitary in the 
 crowds. And thou hast not sought the de- 
 liverance promised by the prophecies. Yea, 
 the priests have well said : thou art of no- 
 ble origin. But, mad, like the others, thou 
 hast sought those of thy race among sol- 
 diers and kings, and thought that thou 
 hadst met with an equal in thy bride. I 
 have told thee, Stellus, the magical se- 
 crets. 
 
 " Meditate, now, that the oracle may be ac- 
 complished, that thou mayest be delivered 
 from all evil approach from the evil ap-
 
 EPHRAIM MIKHAEL. 145 
 
 proach of those whom thou canst no longer 
 look upon as thy brothers." 
 
 From the gardens and from the palace 
 where sleeps his bride, Stellus sets forth. 
 He walks in stony plains ; he climbs up arid 
 heights ; he follows shores of funereal flow- 
 ers, and now he has reached a land over- 
 shadowed by rugged mountains with steep 
 and slippery sides. The inhabitants were 
 in great affliction ; for, from the heights of 
 the mountain a monstrous winged horse, 
 belching forth flames, had alighted upon 
 their harvests. The hippogriff shook, with 
 his diamond hoofs and clangorous wings, the 
 walls of the ancient houses. He tore up the 
 soil, destroyed the seeds, struck dead with a 
 glance the laboring oxen. He ravished the 
 virgins, bore them beyond the clouds. They 
 were then seen falling to earth, like red and 
 white flowers fluttering from the open skies. 
 A great clamor, upon the advent of the mon- 
 ster, had arisen, imperious and loud as a her- 
 ald's voice, and prophetic words had been 
 distinguished. The victorious hippogriff 
 would devastate the land till a man could be 
 found who would voluntarily bestride the
 
 146 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 monster between his Hashing wings and fly 
 with him towards the stars. 
 
 Stellus came among these terror-stricken 
 men, and a hope arose in his breast. Ra- 
 diant, he sought the elders of the village, 
 and announced that he would bestride the 
 hippogriff. The men greeted Stellus with 
 long cries of admiration ; the women clasp- 
 ed his knees, and poured upon his feet 
 scented oil and balms ; the sages harangued 
 the people. " See," said they, " him who is 
 about to sacrifice himself for you. He is 
 young and famous \ he might have lived 
 through the royal years of his life. Yet he 
 is willing to leave the beloved dust where 
 we walk with joy ; he is willing to quit the 
 natal mud where we find our pleasure ; he 
 is about to depart for strange stars, towards 
 those skies that prudent men do not dare 
 to contemplate. Glory to the hero ! Gaze 
 upon him who loves you enough to abandon 
 the earth, upon him who is about to sacrifice 
 himself for his brethren !" 
 
 While they were speaking, Stellus, seizing 
 in his fists the luminous mane of the mon- 
 ster, intoned a song of triumph : " Hippo-
 
 EPHRAI'M MIKHAEL. 147 
 
 griff ! liberating hippogriff ! bear me higher 
 than the skies. To obey the divine elder, 
 we will cross the portals of the horizon. I 
 shall rush over the fields and the cities 
 where of yore I have suffered. Hippogriff ! 
 liberating hippogriff ! if no one awaits us 
 above the worlds, let us roam forever in the 
 desert of the constellations. Thou shalt 
 cause gleeful sparks to fly towards the earth. 
 I shall be delivered ; I shall no longer have 
 to endure mankind ; I shall no longer have 
 to love mankind. I shall at last, among the 
 silent stars, learn the bliss of having been 
 born solitary. 
 
 "Hippogriff! liberating hippogriff! if I 
 have deserved to meet those of my race, 
 carry me towards them. Winged horse, 
 charger worthy of a noble horseman, carry 
 me at last towards those who are really my 
 brethren. As a king returning from battle, 
 I shall arise from the lands of life towards 
 my sidereal dwelling." 
 
 Stellus was caressing with his hand the 
 neck of the hippogriff. The astral ways 
 opened peaceably to their flight; the breezes 
 of heaven murmured words of welcome ;
 
 148 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 white and transparent forms leaned upon 
 the clouds, and through the fainting mists 
 of a strange dawn the Solitary saw at last, 
 shining in the farthest heavens, the light 
 so long sought for, the light of fraternal 
 eyes.
 
 PIERRE QUILLARD. 
 
 THE BROTHERS-AT-ARMS. 
 
 JALLED forth by a dawn, foreboder 
 of glory, the juvenile heroes had 
 buckled on their swords, and 
 from under helmets their tawny manes 
 gushed like springs of light from ten- 
 ebrous rocks. 
 
 They set forth. The scarlet sails 
 of their ship flowered the seas, and 
 its brazen prow irisated the scattered 
 foam of the waves. For years they 
 overran the world. Their bloody re- 
 nown, spreading throughout the night, 
 haunted the dreams of cities. 
 
 They advanced in battle side by side, 
 godlike ; and like falconers unhooding their 
 birds of prey, they sprang the resplendent 
 wings of their swords from their leathern 
 sheaths upon the plains.
 
 152 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 In the hold, heavy with their victorious 
 piracies, they heaped armor of gold with 
 precious stones ; the carbuncles and rubies 
 on the rare fabrics recalled the eyes of 
 priestesses and the wounds of warriors. 
 
 They imagined themselves weary of fight- 
 ing, and returned to their fatherland. Upon 
 the ruins of their birth-house they reared a 
 palace ; its walls of fragrant wood shed 
 upon the country unknown perfumes. 
 
 The wildness of summer emanated from 
 the friezes of sandal-wood ; the stones of 
 the Orient survived the vain corals of flow- 
 ers. And at evening, on the terraces, the 
 Heroes, clad in purple, seemed in their splen- 
 dor the children of the vanished Sun. 
 
 But the weariness of ever- same hours 
 slowly gnawed at their hearts. Of seeking 
 beyond the seas new battles, what was the 
 good ? The glaves would break upon their 
 shields. The certainty of being invincible 
 saddened their haughty souls. 
 
 Upon a morning of glory like the one on 
 which they had set sail, being alone worthy 
 of struggling one against the other, they 
 seized once more the idle swords hanging
 
 PIERRE QUILLARD. 153 
 
 among the panoplies, and giving vent to 
 shouts of joy, the savage warriors leaped 
 forth. 
 
 Crazed by their supreme play, 
 they cut and thrust at one 
 another. They fought till 
 night, and when the shad- . , 
 ows came, struck by a 
 double blow, with eyes towards the stars, 
 they fell, each vanquished in his brother's 
 victory.
 
 RODOLPHE DARZENS. 
 
 '57 
 
 THE SAD SEASON. 
 
 ERE is winter. 
 
 The season of rapid 
 \ dusks, the season when, 
 in the streets glistening 
 with rain, the glimmer of 
 day struggles early with 
 the light of the lamps, 
 while through the humid air is diffused the 
 fresh and acid perfume of December fruits. 
 Already, to-night, I have seen gliding along 
 the sidewalk the narrow handcart, upon 
 which the dark gold of the mandarins is 
 piled up, so regularly, alongside the 
 paler gold of the oranges ; and the 
 little handcart passes by vacillating 
 while the huckstress utters her pro- 
 longed cry. 
 
 But I walk fast to warm myself.
 
 158 
 
 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 Here is winter. 
 
 The season of sudden deaths, the season 
 when, in the streets glacial with wind, the 
 heat of life succumbs fast to the mortal 
 cold, while in one's morose soul 
 spreads the alarming thrill of un- 
 known maladies. And to-night, 
 upon a deserted bench, a little old 
 woman has fallen, dressed all in 
 black. Hollow, her eyes ; thin, her 
 lips; and so pinched her nostrils! 
 Wasted away, very pale, yet almost pretty ! 
 Once more she has humbly coughed, and 
 all is over. The crowd surges around her, 
 curious and full of counsel. 
 
 But I walk fast to warm myself.
 
 RODOLPHE DARZENa 159 
 
 ON THE PROMENADES. 
 
 BEFORE the agony of day, during 
 the hours that are its old age, 
 while wandering on the long 
 and empty boulevards, have I 
 not often met these little old 
 men and women whom the magical years 
 have so metamorphosed that they have left 
 nothing in them of what they once were ? 
 
 No trace of the radiant past is visible on 
 their transformed faces, and when they come, 
 every Sunday as soon as that calm day 
 has grown old, like themselves to sit on 
 the benches yet warm with the sun, and re- 
 main motionless till dusk, attentive to the 
 last harmonies of the tremulous light, I feel 
 as weary as they are, and more than once I 
 have stopped to gaze at them. 
 
 Dear creatures, ugly and ridiculous ! They
 
 160 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 are, and have no eyes ; speak, and have no 
 tongue ; try to live yet, and hum in feeble 
 tones, hum of the good old times gone by, 
 moved by the flying light and by the soft 
 heat that leaves them by degrees. Charm- 
 ing and superannuated, I remember them 
 now and recognize them ; for were they not 
 you, my old hopes and my old thoughts, 
 were they not ?
 
 
 

 
 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 
 
 i6 3 
 
 "WHOM lovest thdu 
 the best, enigmatical 
 man, say, thy father, 
 thy mother, thy sister, or thy brother ?" 
 
 " I have neither father, nor mother, nor 
 sister, nor brother." 
 
 " Thy friends ?" 
 
 "You use there a word whose sense has 
 to this day remained unknown to me." 
 
 " Thy fatherland ?" 
 
 " I know not in what latitude it is situ- 
 ated." 
 
 "Beauty?" 
 
 "I would fain love -it, godlike and immor- 
 tal." 
 
 "Gold?" 
 
 " I hate it as you hate God."
 
 164 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 " Eh ? What lovest them, then, extraor- 
 dinary stranger ?" 
 
 " I love the clouds .... the clouds that 
 pass .... over there .... the marvellous 
 clouds !"
 
 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 
 
 THE 
 CONFITEOR OF THE ARTIST. 
 
 jow penetrating are the dying days 
 of autumn ! Ah ! pen- 
 etrating unto pain ! For 
 there are certain deli- 
 cious sensations whose 
 vagueness does not pre- 
 vent their intensity, and 
 there is no point sharper than that of the 
 Infinite. 
 
 Great delight, that of drowning one's gaze 
 in the immensity of sky and sea ! Solitude, 
 silence, incomparable chastity of the azure; 
 a remote sail that trembles on the horizon, 
 and imitates, by its remoteness and isola- 
 tion, my irremediable existence ; the monot- 
 onous melody of the tide all these things 
 think through me, or I think through them 
 (for in the grandeur of revery the Ego soon
 
 I 66 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 loses itself) ; they think, I say, but musically 
 and picturesquely, without arguments, with- 
 out syllogisms, without deductions. 
 
 But these thoughts, whether they come 
 from me or spring from things, become soon 
 too intense. Energy in pleasure creates un- 
 easiness and positive suffering. My nerves, 
 too tightly strung, give out only discordant 
 and painful vibrations. 
 
 And now the depth of the sky dismays 
 me, its limpidity exasperates me. The in- 
 sensibility of the sea, the immutability of the 
 spectacle revolt me Ah ! must I eter- 
 nally suffer, or fly eternally from the beauti- 
 ful ? Nature, enchantress without pity, rival 
 ever victorious, leave me ! Cease from tempt- 
 ing my desires and my pride ! The study 
 of the beautiful is a duel in which the artist 
 cries out with terror before he is vanquished.
 
 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 167 
 
 EVERY ONE HIS OWN 
 CHIMERA. 
 
 ? NDER a great gray sky, in a 
 great powdery plain without 
 roads, without grass, without 
 a thistle, without a nettle, I met several men 
 who were walking with heads bowed down. 
 
 Each one bore upon his back an enormous 
 Chimera, as heavy as a bag of flour or of coal, 
 or the accoutrements of a Roman soldier. 
 
 But the monstrous beast was not an inert 
 weight ; on the contrary, it enveloped and 
 oppressed the man with its elastic and 
 mighty muscles ; it fastened with its two 
 vast claws to the breast of its bearer, and 
 its fabulous head surmounted the brow of 
 the man, like one of those horrible helmets 
 by which the ancient warriors hoped to in- 
 crease the terror of the enemy. 
 
 I questioned one of these men, and I
 
 I 68 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 asked him whither they were bound thus. 
 He answered that he knew not, neither he 
 nor the others ; but that evidently they were 
 bound somewhere, since they were impelled 
 by an irresistible desire to go forward. 
 
 It is curious to note that not one of these 
 travellers looked irritated at the ferocious 
 beast suspended from his neck and glued 
 against his back; it seemed as though he 
 considered it as making part of himself. 
 None of these weary and serious faces bore 
 witness to any despair ; under the sullen 
 cupola of the sky, their feet plunging into 
 the dust of a soil as desolate as that sky, 
 they went their way with the resigned coun- 
 tenances of those who have condemned 
 themselves to hope forever. 
 
 And the procession passed by me and 
 sank into the horizon's atmosphere, where 
 the rounded surface of the planet slips from 
 the curiosity of human sight. 
 
 And for a few moments I obstinately per- 
 sisted in wishing to fathom the mystery ; but 
 soon an irresistible indifference fell upon me, 
 and I felt more heavily oppressed by it than 
 even they were by their crushing Chimeras.
 
 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 
 
 169 
 
 THE BUFFOON AND THE VENUS. 
 
 WHAT an admirable after- 
 noon ! The vast park swoons 
 under the burning eye of the 
 sun, like youth under the dom- 
 ination of Love. 
 
 The universal ecstasy of 
 things expresses itself in no 
 sound ; the waters themselves 
 seem asleep. Different from 
 human festivals, this is a silent 
 orgy. 
 
 It seems as though an ever- 
 increasing light makes things 
 sparkle more and more ; as 
 though the excited flowers 
 burn with the desire to cope 
 with the azure of the sky by the violence 
 of their colors, and as though the heat, mak-
 
 170 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 ing perfumes visible, causes them to rise 
 towards the sun like vapors. 
 
 Yet amid that universal enjoyment I per- 
 ceived an afflicted being. 
 
 At the feet of a colossal Venus, one of 
 those artificial fools, one of those voluntary 
 buffoons whose task it is to make kings 
 laugh when remorse or weariness oppress- 
 es them, decked out in a loud and ridicu- 
 lous costume, capped with horns and bells, 
 crouching against the pedestal, lifts his eyes, 
 filled with tears, towards the immortal god- 
 dess. 
 
 And his eyes say : " I am the last and the 
 most solitary of mortals, weaned from love 
 and friendship, and thus inferior to the most 
 imperfect of animals. Yet I am made, I too, 
 to understand and feel immortal Beauty ! 
 Ah! Goddess, have pity on my sorrow and 
 my madness !" 
 
 But the implacable Venus gazes afar upon 
 I know not what with her eyes of marble.
 
 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 171 
 
 CROWDS. 
 
 IT is not given to every one to take a bath 
 of multitude : the enjoyment of crowds is an 
 art; and he alone can have a bout of vital- 
 ity at the expense of humanity to whom a 
 fairy has inspired, in his cradle, a taste for 
 travesties and masquerades, the hatred of 
 home and the passion for travel. 
 
 Multitude, solitude : terms equal and con- 
 vertible by the active and fruitful poet. He 
 who knows not how to people his solitude 
 knows not how to be alone in a busy 
 crowd. 
 
 The poet enjoys that imcomparable privi- 
 lege of being himself or some one else at 
 will. Like those wandering souls that seek 
 a body, he enters when he wishes the per- 
 sonality of every one. For him alone ev- 
 erything is vacant; and if certain places
 
 172 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 seem closed to him, it is because to him they 
 do not seem to be worth a visit. 
 
 The solitary and thoughtful wayfarer finds 
 a singular intoxication in this universal com- 
 munion. He who easily espouses the crowd 
 knows feverish enjoyments of which the 
 egotist, closed like a coffer, and the slothful 
 one, imprisoned like a mollusk, will be eter- 
 nally deprived. He adopts as his own all 
 the professions, all the joys, and all the mis- 
 eries that circumstance may present. 
 
 What men call love is very small, very re- 
 stricted, and very faint compared to that in- 
 effable orgy, to that holy surrender of the 
 soul that gives itself wholly, poetry and 
 charity, to the unexpected that arises, to the 
 unknown that passes. 
 
 It is sometimes good to teach the happy 
 ones of this world, if only to humiliate for a 
 while their foolish pride, that there is a hap- 
 piness superior to theirs, more vast and 
 more refined. The founders of colonies, 
 the pastors of peoples, the missionaries ex- 
 iled to the uttermost parts of the world, 
 doubtless know something of those mysteri- 
 ous transports ; and in the midst of the vast
 
 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 173 
 
 family that their genius has created they 
 must laugh sometimes at those who pity 
 them for the agitation of their fortunes and 
 the temperance of their lives.
 
 174 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 THE WINDOWS. 
 
 looks from the outside into an 
 open window never sees as many things as 
 he who looks at a closed window. There is 
 no object more deep, more mysterious, more 
 dreamful, more tenebrous, more dazzling, 
 than a window lighted by a candle. What 
 one can see in full sunlight is always less 
 interesting than what passes behind a pane. 
 In that black and luminous hole life lives, 
 life dreams, life suffers. 
 
 Beyond the billowy roofs I see a woman 
 of middle age, already wrinkled, poor, always 
 leaning over something, and never going out. 
 From her features, from her dress, from her 
 gestures, from a mere nothing, I have imag- 
 ined the story of that woman, or rather her 
 legend, and sometimes I recite it to myself 
 and weep.
 
 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 
 
 '75 
 
 If it had been a poor old man, I would 
 have imagined his legend quite as easily. 
 
 And I retire, proud of having lived and 
 suffered in others than myself. 
 
 Perhaps you will tell me : " Art thou sure 
 that thy legend is the true one ?" What 
 matters the reality outside of me, if it has 
 helped me to live, to feel that I am and 
 what I am !
 
 176 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 THE BLESSINGS OF THE MOON. 
 
 THE Moon, that is caprice itself, looked 
 through the windows as thou wert sleeping 
 in thy cradle, and said to herself, " That 
 child pleases me." 
 
 And she softly descended her stair-way of 
 clouds and passed noiselessly through the 
 panes. She then stretched herself upon 
 thee with the supple tenderness of a moth- 
 er, and she laid her colors on thy face. Thy 
 pupils have since remained green, and thy 
 cheeks extraordinarily pale. It was while 
 contemplating that visitant that thine eyes 
 so oddly widened ; and so tenderly did she 
 clasp thee by the throat that thou hast felt, 
 ever since, the desire to weep. 
 
 Yet in the expansion of her joy the Moon 
 filled all the chamber like a phosphoric at- 
 mosphere, like a luminous poison ; and all
 
 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 
 
 I 77 
 
 that living light thought and said : " Thou 
 shalt eternally suffer the influence of my 
 kiss. Thou shalt be beautiful after my 
 manner. Thou shalt love what I love and 
 what loves me: the water, the clouds, si- 
 lence and night, the sea immense and green 
 the waters uniform and multiform ; the 
 place where thou wilt not be; the 
 lover whom thou wilt not know ; 
 the monstrous flowers, the per- 
 fumes that madden; the cats 
 that swoon on pianos and 
 wail like women, with voices 
 raucous and sweet ! 
 
 " And thou shalt be loved 
 by my lovers, courted by 
 my courtiers. Thou shalt 
 be the queen of the men 
 with green eyes, whose 
 throats I have also clasped 
 in my nocturnal caresses ; of those who 
 love the sea, the immense, tumultuous, 
 green sea, the waters uniform and multi- 
 form, the place where they are not, the wom- 
 en whom they do not know, the sinister flow- 
 ers that resemble the censers of an unknown
 
 178 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 religion, the perfumes that obscure the will, 
 and the savage and voluptuous animals that 
 are emblematical of their madness." 
 
 And it is for that, accursed and beloved 
 child whom I spoil, that I am now lying at 
 thy feet, seeking in all thy being the reflec- 
 tion of the redoubtable divinity, of the pro- 
 phetic godmother, of the poisoning nurse of 
 all the lunatics.
 
 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 179 
 
 ANYWHERE 
 OUT OF THE WORLD. 
 
 HIS life is a hospital 
 where every patient 
 is possessed with the 
 desire to change his bed. This one would 
 prefer to suffer before the stove, and that 
 other thinks that he would recover by the 
 window. 
 
 It always seems to me that I will be bet- 
 ter where I am not, and that question of re- 
 moval is one that I discuss incessantly with 
 my soul. 
 
 " Tell me, my soul, poor chilled soul, 
 what wouldst thou think of dwelling in Lis- 
 bon ? It must be warm there, and thou 
 wouldst grow as lusty as a lizard. The city 
 is on the sea-shore ; they say that it is built 
 of marble, and that the inhabitants have 
 such a dislike for anything green that they
 
 180 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 uproot all the trees. There is a landscape 
 after thy taste, a landscape composed of 
 light and minerals, and water to reflect 
 them." 
 
 My soul makes no answer. 
 
 " Since thou lovest repose so well, com- 
 bined with the sight of movement, wilt thou 
 come and dwell in Holland, that beatifying 
 land? Mayhaps thou wouldst find distrac- 
 tion in that country, whose image thou hast 
 so often admired in the museums. What 
 wouldst think of Rotterdam, thou who lov- 
 est forests of masts, and ships anchored 
 before the steps of houses ?" 
 
 My soul remains dumb. 
 
 "Thou wouldst smile, perhaps, on Ba- 
 tavia ? We would find there the mind of 
 Europe joined to the beauty of the tropics." 
 
 Not a word. Is my soul dead ? 
 
 " Hast thou, then, attained such a state 
 of numbness that thou findest pleasure only 
 in thy sorrow? If so, let us fly to the lands 
 that are the analogues of Death. I have 
 it, poor soul ! I will pack my trunk for Tor- 
 neo. Let us go yet farther, to the extrem- 
 ity of the Baltic ; yet farther from life, if
 
 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. l8l 
 
 possible ; let us settle at the Pole. There 
 the sun slants upon the earth, and the slow 
 alternations of light and night suppress va- 
 riety and increase monotony, that half of 
 Nothingness. There we shall be able to 
 take long baths of darkness, while, to divert 
 us, the aurora borealis will send us from 
 time to time its rosy rays, like the reflection 
 of the fireworks of Hell !" 
 
 At last my soul bursts forth, and wisely 
 cries to me : " Anywhere ! anywhere ! as 
 long as it be out of the world !"
 
 DEIAROTE-
 
 ACHILLE DELAROCHE. 
 
 THE CONQUERING 
 DREAM. 
 
 i HE sinister thunder of war- 
 horns crashes in the 
 bloody West. 
 
 Under the livid West 
 the lawless dances cir- 
 cle around the swords 
 rusted with ruddy clots. 
 The thatched huts, the granite ramparts, 
 the white tents of the nomads smoke in an- 
 guish towards the indifferent stars. 
 
 The horde of the males rolling in a wind 
 of panic ! 
 
 Mothers in tears, heavy with the hope of 
 childbirth, lifting their palms, with 
 prayers or imprecations, towards 
 the dumb hostility of heaven ! 
 
 The red pride of the Barbarians 
 is about to trample under the steel
 
 1 86 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 of their horses' hoofs the prostrate and 
 panting flesh of the vanquished. 
 
 The war-horns sound the supreme knell. 
 
 But thou ! while the white robes redden in 
 the purple of the bloody West, 
 
 While the helmets and battle-axes glisten 
 in the seething fight, 
 
 Who art thou, ascetic and solitary, who 
 heardest not the cry of thy brethren ? 
 
 Who ? The Dreamer ! with thy hand upon 
 thy Vedic staff, deaf to the vain tumult of 
 the cities, scrutinizing the algebra of the 
 cosmic arcana ! 
 
 Lifting thy purified will towards the new 
 God, conqueror of gods, thou listenest to 
 the sublime rhythm of the spheres echoing 
 in thy bosom. 
 
 And thou causest to spring for the future, 
 from the mystic symbol, the divination of a 
 peaceful strife of ideas. 
 
 At thy feet the tribes will lay down the 
 sacrilege of their homicidal swords, O Seer ! 
 
 O Magician whose brow is aureoled with 
 the new dawn which will force the steel and 
 purples to pale before thy triumphant Eu- 
 reka !
 
 STEPHANE MALLARME. 189 
 
 I M JHJTUMN. 
 
 SINCE Maria has left me for another star 
 which one, Orion, Altai'r, or is it thou, 
 green Venus ? I have always cherished soli- 
 tude. How many long days have I passed 
 alone with my cat ! By a/one, I mean with 
 no material being ; and my cat is a mystic 
 companion, a spirit. I can therefore say 
 that I have passed long days with my cat, 
 and alone, with one of the last authors of 
 the Latin decadence. For since the white 
 creature is no more, strangely and singularly 
 have I loved all that is summed up in that 
 word : fall. Thus, of the year, my favorite 
 season is the last languishing days of sum- 
 mer, that immediately precede autumn ; and 
 of the day, the hour that I choose for going 
 forth is when the sun rests before sinking, 
 with rays of yellow brass upon the gray walls,
 
 190 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 and of red brass upon the window-panes. 
 In the same way the literature from which 
 my spirit seeks a sad voluptuousness will be 
 the agonizing poetry of the last moments of 
 Rome, so long, however, as it in nowise be- 
 trays the rejuvenating approach of the Bar- 
 barians, and does not lisp the infantile Latin 
 of the first Christian prose. 
 
 I was therefore reading one of those 
 dear poems (whose scaling enamel has more 
 charm for me than the carnation of youth), 
 and had plunged a hand in the fur of the 
 pure animal, when a barrel-organ began to 
 sing languishingly and mournfully under my 
 window. It played in the long walk of pop- 
 lars, whose leaves seem to me yellow, even in 
 summer, since Maria has passed there with 
 tapers for the last time. The instrument 
 of those that are sad, yes, truly : the piano 
 scintillates, the violin opens light to the torn 
 soul, but the barrel-organ, in the dusk of 
 memory, has made me despairingly dream. 
 Now that it was murmuring a joyously vul- 
 gar tune, that made the heart of the fau- 
 bourgs grow merry, a superannuated and 
 hackneyed tune, whence came it that its
 
 STEPHANE MALLARME. 191 
 
 flourishes lured me to dreams and made me 
 weep like a romantic ballad ? I imbibed it 
 slowly, and I refrained from throwing a pen- 
 ny out of the window, for fear of making a 
 movement and of finding that the instrument 
 was not singing of itself.
 
 I 9 2 
 
 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 THAT timepiece of Saxony, that delays 
 and rings thirteen hours among its flowers 
 and its gods, to whom has it belonged ? Me- 
 thinks that it came from Saxony by the slow 
 stage-coaches, of yore. 
 
 (Singular shadows hang from the tarnish- 
 ed panes.) 
 
 And thy Venetian mirror, deep as a cool 
 fountain in its frame of ungilt chimeras, 
 whom has it reflected ? I am sure that more 
 than one woman has bathed in its water the 
 sin of her beauty; and perchance I might 
 see a naked ghost if I looked long enough. 
 
 " Mischievous one, thou often sayest wick- 
 ed things." . . .
 
 STEPHANE MALLARME. 193 
 
 (I see spider-webs high up on the great 
 windows.) 
 
 Our coffer is very old : behold how the fire 
 reddens its sad wood-work; the deadened 
 curtains are as old as it, and the tapestry 
 of the arm-chairs whose colors have grown 
 dim, and the ancient engravings on the 
 walls, and all our olden furniture. Seem- 
 eth it not to thee, indeed, that the bengalis 
 and the bluebird have lost their tints with 
 time? 
 
 (Do not think of the spider-webs that 
 tremble high up on the great windows.) 
 
 Thou lovest all those things, and that is 
 why I can live near thee. Hast thou not 
 desired, O my sister whose eyes look out 
 from the past, that in one of my poems should 
 appear these words, "the grace of faded 
 things?" New objects displease thee; thee 
 also do they frighten with their shrieking 
 boldness, and thou wouldst feel the need of 
 using them a difficult task for those who 
 do not relish action. 
 13
 
 i 9 4 
 
 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 Come, close thine old German almanac, 
 which them readest with attention, although 
 it appeared more than a hundred years ago, 
 and the kings that it announces are all 
 dead ; and throwing myself on the ancient 
 carpet, my head cradled between thy chari- 
 table knees on thy dress of dim colors, O 
 tranquil child, I will talk to thee for hours ; 
 there are no more fields, and the streets are 
 empty, and I will talk to thee of our furni- 
 ture. Thou art absent-minded ? 
 
 (Those spider- 
 webs shake high 
 on the great win- 
 dows.)
 
 JEMILE HENNEQUIN. 197 
 
 MINORATION. 
 
 ET all that is be no more. 
 
 Let glances fade and the vivac- 
 ity of gestures fall. 
 Let us be humble, soft, and slow. 
 Let love be without passion, and 
 let us exchange weary caresses. 
 
 Let the wise man speak smilingly 
 of his wisdom, let the poet be indulgent to 
 his art. 
 
 Let there be some who forgive and many 
 who forget. 
 
 Let us sleep, and let us live in all ways 
 more like the dead. 
 
 And perhaps existence will lose some of 
 its harshness ; perhaps in a tideless calm 
 some souls will find repose ; there will be 
 half-opened lips and wandering eyes, and 
 groping hands happy to meet.
 
 198 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 THE QUEST. 
 
 GO seeking in the eyes of women mute 
 
 promises of bliss. 
 
 And my glances cross, and my glances 
 arrest eyes that are either void or distant, 
 or turned aside, 
 
 In which I perceive solely the incuri- 
 osity of all and of myself. 
 
 I became thus indifferent to others. 
 
 And my eyes also decline appeals for 
 compassion, and, void themselves, know how 
 to plunge into emptiness, and touch with a 
 passing glance the vaguest passers-by. 
 
 For I have learned to keep their softness 
 for my own wounds, and I pour out liberally 
 for myself the consolations denied to others 
 and by others. 
 
 Let every one be his own lover, said He.
 
 EMILE HENNEQUIN. 
 
 I 99 
 
 A DREAM. 
 
 a church, whose pillars are gray with 
 age, under the lifted hands of the 
 blessing priest, little girls are kneel- 
 ing. 
 
 They wear black frocks, and upon 
 
 their black ringlets, over their clear 
 
 eyes and their pink brows, they bear 
 
 round wreaths of white roses. 
 When they have arisen, they 
 
 depart by the low arches ; and 
 
 following them, I am joined by 
 
 the palest of them all, in her black 
 
 frock and with her white wreath. 
 And fixing upon me her hum- 
 ble eyes full of sorrow, lifting her 
 
 head up to mine, she says, very 
 
 slowly, "Are there far-away lands 
 
 of delight, satisfied, satisfying?"
 
 200 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 "Alas!" said I, "they are all the same, 
 neither evil nor good, and gray is life, and 
 gray is death." 
 
 She had left, but came back palely smil- 
 ing; around my neck she locked her arms, 
 and touched my cheek with her lips, cold 
 lips. . . . 
 
 "Alas !" said I, " they are all the same, 
 all the kisses, mine and thine, and dim is 
 life and dim is death."
 
 EMILE HENNEQUIN. 2OI 
 
 THE IRREMEDIABLE. 
 
 OFTEN say to my sad heart : " If this 
 trouble were taken away from me 
 I would smile again, I would have 
 cheerful eyes that please. If this 
 trouble were taken away from me, 
 who knows if I would not be happy ?" 
 But the inner voice, perspicacious and un- 
 deceivable, makes answer : " If that trouble 
 were taken away from thee ; thou wouldst 
 bow beneath this other weight or that; and 
 if, free from suffering, thou didst attempt to 
 redress thy wounded soul, thou wouldst feel 
 it irremediably bent, like those flexible masts 
 that a perpetual storm has inflected." 
 
 And I remain thus, dreaming, listening to 
 that interminable dialogue between the heart 
 that desires and the reason that reprehends, 
 going from hypothesis to hypothesis, like a
 
 202 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 blind bird casting itself incessantly against 
 the four walls of its cage. 
 
 And when I have made a thousand times 
 the circuit of my inextricable dilemma, I 
 load my back once more with my changeful 
 yet identical destiny; then staggering under 
 the familiar weight, resuming the ancient 
 and rugged road with my fellow-men con- 
 demned like me to death, I obstinately re- 
 peat to my sad heart : " If this trouble were 
 taken away from me, who knows if I would 
 not be happy ?"
 
 JiMILE HENNEQUIN. 
 
 IN our crazed brains words are visions, 
 visions ecstatic, visions chimerical, are vi- 
 sions without models and without object, 
 ideals rather than images, desires rather 
 than reminiscences ; and how distant these 
 ideals, how painful these desires ! 
 
 There is no woman who gives us the ra- 
 diant dream that lurks beneath the word 
 Woman ; there is no wine that realizes the 
 intoxication imagined by the word Wine ; 
 there is no gold, pale gold or dusky gold, 
 that gives out the tawny fulguration of the 
 word Gold ; there is no perfume that our 
 deceived nostrils find equal to the word Per- 
 fume ; no blue, no red that figures the tints 
 with which our imaginations are colored ; 
 all is too little for the word All ; and no
 
 204 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 nothingness is an empty enough vacuity as 
 to be that arch-terrorist word, Nothing. 
 
 What is to be done, then, in this world 
 where everything is beneath our expecta- 
 tions ? What is to be done, O my mind, 
 with these diminished realities, reduced and 
 dim images of our thoughts, sticks of which 
 we have made thyrses, banjos of which we 
 have made citherns, aquarelles that we have 
 anilinized, dreams opiated by us. In truth, 
 incapable of lowering itself, incapable also 
 of raising things, let my spirit continue to 
 suffer the shrill dissonance, to see the re- 
 pugnant contrast, to feel the disproportion, 
 till the inferior has won and till matter has 
 taken back to its bosom what scorned it for 
 having too much loved it.
 
 EMILE HENNEQUIN. 205 
 
 THE EARTH. 
 
 DDYING through the blue or black 
 heavens of nights and of days, 
 full in her deep hollows of the 
 tumultuous water of the seas, turgid and flat, 
 the earth curves, sinuates, and rises, dry un- 
 der the fresh air, firm and mobile, jutting 
 forth in mountains, falling away in plains, 
 brown and all woven with the silver woof 
 of rivers and lakes, green and all bristling 
 with trees, with plants, with grass. 
 
 The sea lashes the shores, glaucous, 
 troubled, assailing, and broken, or fair and 
 full of slow volutes ; she encircles the conti- 
 nents with mists, with storms, with shimmer- 
 ing waters, languishingly dying; the earth 
 emerges massive and stable, sleeping in 
 shadow or striated with red, yellow, and
 
 206 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 green, according to the rise and fall of day; 
 aired by the winds, swept by the rains, bear- 
 ing upon its huge members the swarming 
 agitation of beings, the growth of plants, 
 and the song of insects, the gallop of beasts, 
 and the dumb trepidation of cities. Con- 
 tinuous murmur of life eternally threatened 
 by the sea, monstrous in the thunder of its 
 awful floods. 
 
 And there are heavens of hope, there are 
 heavens of light, summits lifting to the 
 clouds the tender strength of sprouts ; there 
 are white splashes of water wetting with 
 brine the rapid flight of sea-gulls, high- 
 standing forests circling in shadow the vel- 
 vet of the green pastures, aromatic and soft ; 
 the mountains lift and swell their heavy 
 shrouds of immaculate snows, and the sharp 
 peaks point the extreme pinnacles of their 
 rocks towards the unknown and magnifi- 
 cently vaulted abysms, vermeil and tene- 
 brous, whence spread the imperious splen- 
 dor of the sun, the playful sweetness of the 
 moon, and the peace of the mysteriously 
 palpitating stars.
 
 ADRIEN REMACLE. 2 09 
 
 THE CITY. 
 
 THE Poet goes forth on the road, refusing 
 to mingle with the crowds, ages ahead and 
 ages behind the other wayfarers. He is 
 child, youth, and man, but ever young and 
 fair. He goes before him, thinking that he 
 discerns, every hour, through the mists of 
 the morning, beyond the suns of the day, 
 above the vapors of the evening, emerging 
 from opaque nights, blue beneath the serene 
 moons, the sparkling domes of the City of 
 Dreams. 
 
 Ami he sings of that City as he walks. 
 
 He sees, above the blue and pink mount- 
 ains, heavens of purple, gold riven with 
 long flashes, aureoled with confused cities 
 scintillating in sombre distances ; behind 
 those mountains, under the heavens, opens 
 the vast portico of the City. 
 14
 
 210 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 And he sings of that City as he walks. 
 
 The rivers and the seas reveal to him 
 green deepnesses, blue abysms, unknown 
 reflections of the grandeurs of the past, 
 mirages prophetic of future monuments : 
 mere approaches and presages of the mag- 
 nificence of the City. 
 
 And he sings of that City as he walks by the 
 waters. 
 
 War is howling in the plains, around the 
 mountains. He stops and he watches ; he 
 hearkens to the clashing of swords, to the 
 thunder of iron. He shudders ; those men 
 must fight for the City. 
 
 And he sings of that City as he walks with 
 the men. 
 
 When the warlike bands are silent, he 
 passes through peaceful gardens ; the young 
 women admire and follow him ; he bears a 
 golden nimbus, his words exhale an un- 
 known perfume, the breeze in his locks 
 makes melody. He stops : here are desert- 
 ers from the City. 
 
 He asks them the way, and sings of them as 
 he walks. 
 
 W T hen the Poet has walked long he is
 
 ADRIEN REMACLE. 
 
 211 
 
 weary of the road. He meets a woman in 
 white : he recognizes her. She comes tow- 
 ards him : it is she who will lead me into 
 the City. 
 
 And he sings of the City, and he falls asleep 
 in dreams.
 
 PAUL MARGUERITTE. 215 
 
 THE DEATH OF PIERROT. 
 
 f[PANTO- 
 MIMK. ] 
 is in a lunar garden, where color- 
 less roses sleep amid the shadowy 
 leafage. A cold Moon mirrors her- 
 self in a blue pond. A nightingale's 
 song weeps upon the earth. And 
 in a ray of the moon, entwined in one an- 
 other's arms, Pierrot all white and Colum- 
 bine all pink in her outblown gauze skirt, 
 sit motionless on a stone bench amorous 
 couple whose mingled lips palpitate in a long 
 embrace. They love one another distract- 
 edly. Long looks, vows, raptures, beneath 
 that nocturnal sky, that moon, those flowers, 
 those songs of birds, they bear witness, they 
 swear to their tenderness. And then they 
 are entwined anew in one another's arms 
 and faint with love. 
 
 But a mysterious suffering contracts Col-
 
 2l6 
 
 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 umbine's features ; she springs to her feet, 
 and one hand upon her wounded heart, she 
 gasps like a dying bird. She suffers. A 
 sudden damp empearls her pale forehead. 
 Oh, the terrifying an- 
 guish of Pierrot ! The 
 nightingale is silent. 
 
 A heavy, an awful 
 silence weighs on all 
 things. And the 
 thought of death in- 
 sinuates itself in the 
 minds of Columbine 
 and Pierrot. Death ! 
 
 yes. The invisible spectre, the watcher 
 that walks in the shadow of the living. Col- 
 umbine sees him, and with out -stretched 
 finger, in unutterable dread, she points to 
 him. Pierrot, armed with a spade that he 
 has picked up in the grass, leaps forward 
 against the enemy that cannot be seized. 
 Columbine smiles, already frozen and cold 
 as marble, and disarms Pierrot, who resigns 
 himself. But indignation seizes him. 
 
 " To die ? Ah ! can that be ? The eyes 
 of Columbine, so beautiful, what ! will be
 
 PAUL MARGUERITTE. 
 
 217 
 
 closed ? Her sweet beauty will fall into hor- 
 rible dust. The awful worms ! But before 
 that ! The anguish of burial, of prayers, all 
 the horror of mortuary ceremonies. No!" 
 And he shakes his fist to heaven, curses God, 
 wants to die. 
 
 But Columbine dan- 
 ces, and her light shad- 
 ow dances with her on 
 the blue water. She 
 dances, and her arms re- 
 pel and banish ; her feet 
 fly from the earth ; she 
 melts little by little, di- 
 aphanous and light, like 
 a butterfly of gauze. 
 "Ah! return !" cries Pierrot. And he stretch- 
 es out his hands despairingly. Touched by 
 his appeal, she runs back, she nestles against 
 him. But already he feels that she is no 
 longer living; and she throws herself back, 
 her eyes wide open, her gauze skirt agitated 
 by long spasms, like the wings of a butterfly. 
 
 "Columbine!" implores Pierrot; but she 
 falls dead. 
 
 He shakes the poor little listless being,
 
 2l8 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 that is no more than a rag. Ah ! where has 
 she gone to ? He calls her. For she is no 
 more in that sad body. Ah ! but where then ? 
 In the golden moon, the blue sky, the roses, 
 the pond? Where can he rejoin her, and 
 how ? Die also ? Come, poor inanimate 
 body. Pierrot leans over Columbine, clasps 
 around his neck the dead arms of the child, 
 and stepping on the stone balustrade of the 
 pond plouf ! he throws himself in the 
 water, after a long shudder of horror. 
 
 The nightingale sings their requiem. The 
 roses, in the lunar garden, have not awaken- 
 ed. They sleep amid the shadowy leafage. 
 The cold moon is mirrored in the blue pond. 
 And the stone bench of the departed lovers 
 glistens, white and empty, in the nocturnal 
 light.
 
 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 221 
 
 I HAD my birth in the caverns of these 
 mountains. Like the stream of this val- 
 ley whose first drops trickle from some 
 rock that weeps in a deep grotto, the first 
 moment of my life fell in the darkness of 
 a remote abode and without troubling the 
 silence. When our mothers draw near to the 
 time of their delivery, they withdraw to the 
 caverns, and in the depth of the wildest of 
 them, in the thickest of its gloom, they bring 
 forth, without uttering a plaint, fruits silent 
 as themselves. Their mighty milk makes us 
 surmount without languor or dubious strug- 
 gle the first difficulties of life ; yet we leave 
 our caverns later than you your cradles. 
 For the belief is current among us that the
 
 222 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 first days of existence should be hidden and 
 enshrouded, as days filled with the presence 
 of the gods. My growth was almost entirely 
 accomplished in the darkness where I was 
 born. The recesses of my dwelling pene- 
 trated so far into the thickness of the mount- 
 ain that I would not have known on what side 
 was the entrance, had not the winds, when 
 they sometimes found their way through the 
 opening, sent freshness in, and a sudden 
 trouble. Sometimes, too, my mother came 
 back to me, having about her the perfumes 
 of the valleys; or streaming from the waters 
 which she frequented. Her returning thus, 
 without speaking of the valleys or the riv- 
 ers, but with their emanations about her, 
 troubled my spirit, and I wandered restless- 
 ly in the darkness. " What is it," I thought, 
 "that outside world whither my mother 
 goes, and what reigns in it so potent as to 
 call her to it so often? And what is felt 
 in it so conflicting that she returns each 
 day with different emotions?" My mother 
 came back to me sometimes animated with 
 a profound joy, sometimes sorrowful and 
 lagging and as though wounded. The joy
 
 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 223 
 
 that she brought back betrayed itself from 
 afar in some peculiarities of her walk and 
 in her looks. It found response in my 
 breast. But her despondency affected me 
 far more, and carried me far deeper into 
 those conjectures to which my spirit was 
 prone. At such moments I was troubled 
 by my own strength ; I recognized in it 
 a power that could not remain solitary; 
 and betaking myself either to toss my arms 
 or to multiply my gallopings in the spacious 
 shadows of the cavern, I endeavored to 
 discover, from the blows that I dealt in 
 space, and from the transports of my course 
 through it, in what direction my arms were 
 to stretch and my feet to bear me. Since 
 then I have wound my arms around the 
 busts of Centaurs, and the bodies of heroes, 
 and the trunks of oaks; my hands have tried 
 the rocks, the waters, the innumerable plants, 
 and the subtlest impressions of the air ; for 
 I uplift them in the dark and calm nights, 
 that they may catch the winds and show 
 signs whereby I may divine my road. My 
 feet see, O Melampus, how worn they are ! 
 And yet, all benumbed as T am in this ex-
 
 224 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 tremity of age, there are days when, in the 
 full sunlight, upon the summits, I repeat 
 these gallopings of my youth in the cavern, 
 with the same purpose, brandishing my 
 arms and employing all that is left of my 
 fleetness. 
 
 These disturbances alternated with long 
 absences of any anxious movement. Thence- 
 forth I possessed in my whole being no 
 other sentiment than that of the growth and 
 degrees of life rising in my breast. Having 
 lost the love of wild transports and retired 
 into absolute rest, I tasted without altera- 
 tion the kindly influence of the gods dif- 
 fused within me. Peace and shade preside 
 over the secret charm of the sentiment of 
 life. Shades that dwell among the caves of 
 these mountains ! I owe to your silent care 
 the hidden education which has so powerful- 
 ly nurtured me, and that I have, under your 
 protection, tasted life in its purity and as it 
 came to me flowing from the bosom of the 
 gods. When I emerged from your retreat 
 into the light of day, I tottered and hailed it 
 not, for it took possession of me with vio- 
 lence, making me drunk as would have done
 
 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 225 
 
 a fatal liquor suddenly poured into my breast, 
 and 1 felt that my being, until then so firm 
 and so simple, was unsettled and was losing 
 much of itself, as though it would have scat- 
 tered to the winds. 
 
 O Melampus ! thou who wouldst know the 
 life of the Centaurs, by what will of the 
 gods hast thou been guided towards me, the 
 oldest and most forlorn of them all ? It is 
 long since I have ceased to practise any 
 part of their life. I no longer leave this 
 mountain summit to which age has confined 
 me. The points of my arrows now serve 
 me only to uproot tenacious plants ; the 
 tranquil lakes know me still, but the rivers 
 have forgotten me. I will tell thee some- 
 thing of my youth ; but these recollections, 
 issuing from a worn memory, flow slowly, 
 like the drops of an ungenerous libation 
 falling from a damaged urn. I easily told 
 thee of my first years, as they were peaceful 
 and perfect ; it was life single and simple 
 that satiated me ; all of it is easily recalled 
 and recited. A god besought to relate his 
 life would give it in two words, O Melam- 
 pus ! 
 15
 
 226 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 The course of my youth was rapid and 
 full of agitation. I lived on movement and 
 knew no limit to my steps. In the pride of 
 my free strength I roamed, pushing in all 
 directions over these deserts. One day, 
 when I was following a valley through which 
 the Centaurs seldom venture, I discovered a 
 man making his way along the river on the 
 opposite bank. He was the first who had 
 offered himself to my sight ; I despised him. 
 " Behold," I said to myself; " at the utmost 
 but the half of my being! How short are 
 his steps ! and how awkward is his gait ! 
 His eyes seem to measure space with sad- 
 ness. Doubtless he is a Centaur over- 
 thrown by the gods, and reduced by them 
 thus to drag himself along." 
 
 I often rested from the wanderings of 
 these days in the bed of rivers. One half 
 of myself, hidden below the waters, strove 
 in movement to keep above them, while the 
 other half arose tranquil, and I lifted my 
 idle arms high above the flood. I would 
 thus forget myself in the midst of the waters, 
 yielding to the impulse of their course, which 
 carried me afar and led their wild guest to
 
 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 227 
 
 all the charms of their banks. How often, 
 surprised by the night, have I followed the 
 currents beneath the spreading shadows 
 that cast to the depths of the valleys the 
 nocturnal influence of the gods ! My im- 
 petuous life would then calm down till it 
 left nothing but a faint consciousness of my 
 existence, diffused in equal measure through- 
 out my whole being, like the gleams in the 
 waters where I swam, of the night-roaming 
 goddess. Melampus, my old age regrets the 
 rivers ; peaceful for the most part and mo- 
 notonous they follow their destiny with more 
 calm than the Centaurs, and a wisdom more 
 beneficent than that of men. When I left 
 their bosom I was followed by their gifts, 
 which accompanied me for whole days and 
 retired slowly, in the manner of perfumes. 
 
 A wild and blind inconstancy disposed of 
 my footsteps. In the midst of the most vio- 
 lent races it happened that I would sudden- 
 ly break my gallop, as if a chasm had open- 
 ed at my feet, or else a god had stood before 
 me. These sudden immobilities allowed me 
 to feel my life agitated by the transports 
 in which I found myself. Of yore, in the
 
 228 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 forest, I used to cut boughs which, while run- 
 ning, I lifted above my head; the swiftness 
 of the run suspended the mobility of the 
 foliage, which gave out but a faint rustling ; 
 but at the least pause the wind and its agi- 
 tation would return to the bough, which re- 
 sumed the course of its murmurings. So 
 my life, at the sudden interruption of the im- 
 petuous careers to which I abandoned myself 
 through these valleys, pulsated through my 
 whole breast. I heard it run boiling and roll- 
 ing with the fire which it had gathered in the 
 space so ardently cleared. My impassioned 
 flanks fought against the floods with which 
 they were inwardly pressed, and felt in their 
 storms the voluptuousness that is known 
 only to the shores of the sea, that of enclos- 
 ing without loss a life risen to its greatest 
 height and supreme wrath. Meanwhile, with 
 head inclined to the wind that brought me 
 coolness, I considered the mountain peaks 
 which had in a few moments melted in the 
 distance, the trees of the banks and the 
 waters of the rivers, the latter carried by a 
 sluggish current, the former bound to the 
 bosom of the earth and mobile only through
 
 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 229 
 
 their branches, subject to the breaths of the 
 air that make them moan. " I alone," said 
 I to myself, " enjoy free movement, and I 
 carry my life, at will, from one end to the 
 other of these valleys. I am happier than 
 the torrents that fall from the mountains to 
 return no more. The rolling of my foot- 
 steps is grander than the complaints of the 
 woods and the sounds of the water; it is 
 the thunder of the wandering Centaur who 
 guides his own steps." So, while my agi- 
 tated flanks were filled with the intoxication 
 of racing, higher did I feel the pride there- 
 of, and turning back my head, I would pause 
 a while to gaze upon my steaming back. 
 
 Youth is like the verdant forests tor- 
 mented by the winds : it tosses on all sides 
 the rich gifts of life and always some deep 
 murmur sways its foliage. Living with the 
 freedom of rivers, breathing without cease 
 the presence of Cybele, whether in the bed 
 of the valleys or on the height of the mount- 
 ains, I bounded whither I would, like a blind 
 and chainless life. But when Night, filled 
 with the calm of the gods, overtook me on 
 the slopes of the mountains, she guided me
 
 230 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 to the mouth of the caverns, and there ap- 
 peased me as she appeases the billows of 
 the sea, letting survive within me faint un- 
 dulations, which kept away sleep without 
 disturbing my repose. Stretched across the 
 threshold of my retreat, my flanks hidden 
 within the cave, and my head under the open 
 sky, I watched the spectacle of the dark. 
 Then the life which had penetrated me from 
 the outside during the day fell away from 
 me drop by drop, returning to the peaceful 
 bosom of Cybele, as after a storm the drops 
 of rain clinging to the foliage fall and rejoin 
 the waters. It is said that the sea -gods 
 during the darkness leave their palaces un- 
 der the deep, and sitting on the promon- 
 tories, let their eyes wander over the floods. 
 Even so I kept watch, having at my feet an 
 expanse of life like the hushed sea. 
 
 Brought back to a distinct and full exist- 
 ence, it seemed as though I had just issued 
 from birth, and as though deep waters which 
 had conceived me in their womb had just 
 left me on the mountain-top, like a dolphin 
 forgotten among the sands by the waves of 
 Amphi trite.
 
 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 231 
 
 My looks had free range, and reached to 
 the most distant points. Like shores ever 
 wet, the line of mountains to the west re- 
 tained the imprint of gleams imperfectly 
 wiped out by the shadows. Yonder still sur- 
 vived in pale clearness summits naked and 
 pure. There I beheld at one time the god 
 Pan descend, ever solitary; at another, the 
 choir of the secret divinities ; or I saw 
 pass some mountain nymph entranced by the 
 night. Sometimes the eagles of Mount Olym- 
 pus traversed the upper sky, and melted away 
 among the far-off constellations or in the 
 shades of the inspired forests. The spirit 
 of the gods, happening to awaken, suddenly 
 troubled the calm of the ancient oaks. 
 
 Thou pursuest wisdom, O Melampus, which 
 is the science of the will of the gods ; and 
 thou roamest among the peoples like a 
 mortal misled by the destinies. There is in 
 this vicinity a stone which, as soon as it is 
 touched, gives out a sound like that of the 
 breaking strings of an instrument; and men 
 say that Apollo, who was tending his flock in 
 these deserts, having laid his lyre upon it, 
 left there the sound of that melody. O
 
 232 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 Melampus ! the roaming gods have laid their 
 lyres upon the stones ; but none, none has 
 forgotten his melody upon them. In the days 
 when I kept my night-watches before the cav- 
 erns, I have sometimes believed that I was 
 about to surprise the thought of the sleeping 
 Cybele, and that the mother of the gods, be- 
 trayed by her dreams, would let fall some 
 of her secrets; but I have never made out 
 more than sounds which faded away in the 
 winds of the night, or words inarticulate as 
 the bubbling of the rivers. 
 
 " O Macareus !" one day said the great 
 Chiron to me, whose old age I followed, "we 
 are both of us Centaurs of the mountain ; 
 but how different are our lives ! Thou seest 
 it ; all the care of my days is the search for 
 plants ; while thou, thou art like those mor- 
 tals who have picked up on the waters or in 
 the woods, and carried to their lips, some 
 fragments of the reed-pipe broken by the 
 god Pan. Thenceforth these mortals, hav- 
 ing breathed from their relics of the god a 
 savage spirit, or perhaps caught some secret 
 madness, enter into the wilderness, plunge 
 into the forests, follow the waters, wander
 
 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 
 
 233 
 
 among the mountains, restless, and impelled 
 by an unknown purpose. The mares be- 
 loved by the winds in the farthest Scythia 
 are not wilder than thou, nor sadder at night- 
 fall, when the North Wind has departed. 
 Seekest thou the gods, O Macareus, and 
 from what origin men, animals, and the ele- 
 ments of the univer- 
 sal fire have sprung? 
 But the aged Ocean, 
 father of all things, 
 keeps locked within 
 his own breast these 
 secrets; and the 
 nymphs who sur- 
 round him sing, // 
 as they weave 
 their eternal cho- 
 rus before him, 
 to cover any sound which might escape from 
 his lips half-opened by slumber. The mor- 
 tals, who have touched the heart of the gods 
 by their virtue, have received from their 
 hands lyres to charm the nations, or new 
 seeds to make them rich ; but from their in- 
 exorable lips, nothing !
 
 234 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 " In my youth Apollo attracted me tow- 
 ards plants, and taught me to extract from 
 their veins the beneficent juices. Since 
 then I have faithfully guarded this great 
 home of the mountains, unquiet, but always 
 turning away in quest of simples, and com- 
 municating the virtues which I discover. 
 Beholdest thou from here the bald summit 
 of Mount Oeta ? Alcides has stripped it to 
 build his pyre, O Macareus ! the demi- 
 gods, children of the gods, spread the skin 
 of lions upon the pyres, and are consumed 
 on the summit of mountains ! The poisons 
 of earth corrupt the blood received from the 
 Immortals. And we, Centaurs begotten by 
 an audacious mortal in the womb of a cloud 
 that bore the semblance of a goddess, what 
 succor could we expect from Jupiter who has 
 smitten with his thunder-bolts the father of 
 our race ? The vulture of the gods everlast- 
 ingly preys on the entrails of the worker 
 who fashioned the first man, O Macareus ! 
 Men and Centaurs recognize as begetters of 
 their life the infractors of the privilege of 
 the Immortals ; and perhaps all that moves 
 outside of them is but stolen from them, a
 
 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 235 
 
 small part of their nature carried afar, like 
 the flying seed, by the all-powerful breath of 
 destiny. It is said that Egeus, father of 
 Theseus, has concealed under the weight 
 of a rock, by the sea-side, memorials and 
 marks whereby his son might one day learn 
 of his birth. The jealous gods have buried 
 somewhere the proofs of the descent of 
 things ; but by the shores of what ocean 
 have they rolled the stone that covers them, 
 O Macareus ?" 
 
 Such was the wisdom towards which the 
 great Chiron led me. Reduced to the ex- 
 tremity of age, the Centaur yet nourished 
 in his spirit the most lofty discourse. His 
 yet vigorous bust had settled but little upon 
 his flanks, from which it rose with a slight 
 inclination, like an oak saddened by the 
 winds, and the force of his steps hardly suf- 
 fered from the loss of years. One would 
 have thought that he still retained the re- 
 mains of the immortality received of yore 
 from Apollo, but which he had returned to 
 that god. 
 
 For me, O Melampus! I decline into old 
 age, calm as the setting of the constellations.
 
 236 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 I still retain hardihood enough to climb to 
 the top of the rocks, and there I linger late, 
 either to gaze on the wild and restless 
 clouds, or to see come up from the horizon 
 the rainy Hyades, the Pleiades, or the great 
 Orion ; but I am conscious that I am wast- 
 ing and passing quickly away like snow 
 floating on the waters, and that shortly I 
 shall go and mingle with the rivers that 
 flow in the vast bosom of the earth.
 
 PAUL MASY. 
 
 A FANTASY. 
 
 /> 
 
 PON the lake of languid waters, 
 f I J impurpled by the last rays 
 ^^xVr of the sun, glides the junk 
 garlanded with flowers. At the prow, in 
 pink and mauve simars embroidered with 
 heraldic chrysanthemums, young girls sing 
 vague and amorous songs, whose echo dies 
 among the bloom of the peach-trees. The 
 young girls pass with smiles and shudders, 
 as though, in the breeze, invisible hands ca- 
 ressed them. They smile and laugh, while 
 their indolent fingers 
 cull the lunar water-rose 
 and the snowy lotus. 
 
 Yonder, against the 
 orange horizon, stand 
 the already darkened 
 forests, towards which fly the flaffing cranes.
 
 240 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 On the left a terrace of pale green marble, 
 where peacocks shriek to the moon. On 
 the right, in an orchard, a strange being 
 with squinting eyes unrolls a long papyrus 
 where, in heteroclitic characters, is written 
 the fate of the fainting day and of the sing- 
 ing girls.
 
 HECTOR CHAINAYE. 243 
 
 THE GUESTS. 
 
 FINE and luminous rain falls 
 softly on the hot and white dust 
 of the roads. The dust, which 
 dares not absorb it, is irisated 
 with sparkles. The wind, too 
 quiet, too feeble to disturb the 
 grasses of the plain, sings among the rus- 
 tling leaves, that move of themselves, not 
 daring to resist the weakness of the wind. 
 The trees quiver with harmonies. The last 
 rays, sad and weary, filter through the thick 
 hangings of the windows, that dare not pre- 
 vent them, so sad and weary are they. And 
 the drawing-room, full of silken dreams, 
 where I sit alone, lights itself up with sleep- 
 ing gleams, like an altar under its high oriels. 
 The tufted carpet finds the floor very 
 smooth, and gives it silent kisses with its
 
 244 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 fringes. The heavy chairs, the heavier arm- 
 chairs of severe shapes, do not dare to press 
 too hard, for fear of hurting the carpet and 
 the floor. The light, which during the day- 
 time has penetrated into the great vases of 
 the etageres and slipped into the flowers of 
 the bouquets, does not dare to come forth, 
 now that the day is extinguished ; the shad- 
 ows vaguely frighten it, and moreover, the 
 vases are such fair resting-places, the chal- 
 ices such soft nests. And through the pris- 
 matic crystal, and through the fiery corals, 
 the light looks at the night spreading over 
 the tufted carpet and the polished floor. 
 The clock has stopped, not daring to make 
 a sound, and wishing to forget the flight of 
 time. 
 
 And I dare not move. Yet I should leave, 
 my place is not here. Have I been bidden ? 
 And as the day retires, a shadowy personage 
 enters mysteriously and takes a seat after 
 having made his bow; then the invited 
 guests sit in a circle and talk to one another 
 in low tones. The carpet understands, the 
 clock listens. Ah ! why am I human ? I 
 cannot even suspect their conversation, I am
 
 HECTOR CHAINAYE. 245 
 
 too brutal to understand their infinitely ten- 
 der souls. If I were to speak they would 
 flee, if even I were to say to them in my 
 most caressing tones : " Stay, I pray you, 
 stay," they would depart, so gross would my 
 voice sound to them. And I feel it; my 
 presence disturbs them and yet I do not 
 move, I dare not.
 
 CATULLE MENDES. 249 
 
 MELICERTE. 
 
 ECAUSE of the prettiest of little 
 mouths and of two eyes like 
 blue star-flowers, I bear a 
 strangely sorrowful heart. 
 
 It is not that she is cruel that 
 I suffer so bitterly because of the prettiest 
 of little mouths. 
 
 She refuses me neither her perfumes nor 
 her smiles ! but because she gives them also 
 to others I bear a strangely sorrowful heart. 
 I one day saw Melicerte, my little shep- 
 herdess, in a dress of pink lawn ; the butter- 
 flies followed her, as also the bees, because 
 of the prettiest of little mouths. 
 
 " Little blooming mouth, what is thy 
 name ?" I said. " Constant vow ! faithful 
 kiss !" It was lying, alas ! I bear a strange- 
 Iv sorrowful heart.
 
 250 
 
 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 Melicerte welcomes all the 
 tender and magnificent suitors 
 who offer her their vows and 
 jewels from the good jeweller 
 because of the prettiest of lit- 
 tle mouths. 
 
 Unfaithful kiss and frivo- 
 lous vow, such are, shepherd- 
 ess Melicerte, the true names 
 for thy lips ! Wherefore I bear 
 a strangely sorrowful heart. 
 
 I curse the eglantines of the 
 lanes and the strawberries of 
 the green woods, and all that 
 resembles it, because of the prettiest of little 
 mouths ! 
 
 In vain does the sun make happy the 
 heavens and the plains, bewitch the couples 
 that go hand in hand through the paths 
 that are never narrow enough ! I bear a 
 strangely sorrowful heart. 
 
 This morning one of my uncles died leav- 
 ing me four houses free of mortgage ; I 
 hardly smiled ! Because of the prettiest of 
 little mouths, I bear a strangely sorrowful 
 heart.
 
 CATULLE iMENDES. 
 
 THE SWANS. 
 
 T *r 
 
 ! I NDER the pale October sun I was 
 \V ) 1 wandering by the Lake of En- 
 -*"V ghien. The swans floated slow- 
 ly, in white and mysterious bands, upon 
 the great surface of the lake, amid the au- 
 tumnal landscape, grave, pompous, and sol- 
 itary. 
 
 The trees, from which the dry leaves had 
 not yet fallen, looked like trees of gold, 
 such as are seen in the pantomimes of the 
 Chatelet theatre ; the wind moaned melo- 
 diously in the branches; under the pale 
 October sun I was wandering by the Lake 
 of Enghien. 
 
 I wandered till evening, and when the 
 pale gloom had fallen I saw the little stars 
 appear, the little stars that are compassion-
 
 252 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 ate to nocturnal melancholy ; and the swans 
 floated slowly, in white and mysterious 
 bands. 
 
 But soon they swam away, and in the 
 vague darkness they seemed a sheet of snow 
 rapidly melting. One only, motionless and 
 ecstatic, remained on the great surface of 
 the lake amid the autumnal sunset. 
 
 And in spite of myself I thought of my 
 soul, which so many dreams and so many 
 loves haunted of yore. Where are the roses 
 of the faded April ? In my soul, which 
 night oppresses, a single love has remain- 
 ed, grave, pompous, and solitary, 
 
 Under the pale October sun.
 
 CATULLE MENDES. 
 
 253 
 
 QUEEN COELIA. 
 
 'OELIA is queen of a chi- 
 merical kingdom, perhaps 
 on the borders of the Forest of Arden, 
 perhaps on the shores of the Isle of Ava- 
 lon. In one of the hundred 
 boudoirs of her palace, where 
 climbing roses flower the silk of 
 the hangings while the birds 
 of the garden fly through the 
 open windows to quarrel with 
 those held captive behind the 
 light wires of golden cages 
 she speaks to her ladies-in-wait- 
 ing, who are playing draughts, 
 or pouring pearl and beryl 
 necklaces in open coffers. " It 
 is true," says Queen Coelia, 
 " that the young student allowed
 
 254 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 himself to die of hunger, last year, in the 
 capital of my kingdom ; but you have not 
 been told the whole story. For a long 
 time he had been sad, because of a dream, 
 and often he was seen in melancholy atti- 
 tudes under the window of the oratory 
 where, of evenings, I play on the clavichord. 
 Then his fellow-students saw him no more. 
 Nobody knew in what solitude, in what 
 silence, he had concealed his languor. One 
 day some people who entered his lodging 
 found him extended upon his disordered 
 bed, very pale, and yet with a smile on his 
 lips. He was dead, but none the less fair. 
 A leech having been summoned, ascertained 
 that the poor youth had died for want of 
 food." 
 
 " That is all the more strange," said one 
 of the ladies-in-waiting, " that they found on 
 the bed, on the table, on the carpet, a num- 
 ber of gold coins bearing the effigy of Your 
 Majesty, and of which one alone would 
 have sufficed to pay for the most costly 
 feast." 
 
 "That is true," said Coelia. " But," she 
 added, as a tear fell from her eyelids and
 
 CATULLE MENDES. 255 
 
 rolled down her cheek till it moistened her 
 smile, " the poor student had died in prefer- 
 ence to parting from a single one of the 
 beautiful gold coins."
 
 256 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 THE TRIAL OF THE ROSES. 
 
 r the garden of the hospital, where flut- 
 ters in the sun the winged snow of 
 the butterflies, the young lunatic wan- 
 ders alone. He is pale, with an air 
 of softness. And what sadness in his vague 
 eyes ! He stops before a sweetbrier, culls a 
 brier-rose ; stops between two rose-bushes, 
 culls from one a tea-rose, from the other a 
 moss-rose. 
 
 On a wooden bench at the turn of the 
 path he places the three flowers that he has 
 culled. 
 
 He says to the brier-rose : 
 " Brier-rose, answer ! You are accused 
 of having abandoned without pity, when you 
 were a young girl, a poor and sorrowful 
 child who adored you, in favor of an old 
 man who was rich. What have you to say 
 in your defence ?"
 
 CATULLE MEXDES. 257 
 
 He awaits the answer. 
 
 He continues : 
 
 "The cause is heard. I condemn you." 
 
 He says to the tea-rose : 
 
 "Tea-rose, answer! You are accused of 
 having, when you were a worldly young 
 woman, driven to despair, and tortured by 
 the infamous play of your deceitful smiles 
 and of your retracted consents, a miserable 
 young man whose heart, alas ! beat only for 
 you ardently. What have you to say in 
 your defence ?" 
 
 He awaits the answer. 
 
 He continues : 
 
 "The cause is heard. I condemn you." 
 
 He says to the moss-rose : 
 
 "Moss-rose, answer ! Thou art accused 
 of having, when thou wert a fair girl selling 
 thy smiles and thy kisses, crazed by thy 
 caresses, ruined and dishonored an unfort- 
 unate man who sought in thy love the ob- 
 livion of his ancient despair? What hast 
 thou to say in thy defence ?" 
 
 He awaits the answer. 
 
 He continues : 
 
 "The cause is heard. 1 condemn thee." 
 17
 
 258 I'ASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 Having pronounced these sentences, he 
 pulls from his pocket a pretty, complicated 
 instrument made of aromatic woods and of 
 shining steel ; it is a little guillotine, which 
 he has fashioned while dreaming during his 
 hours of leisure. 
 
 One after the other, upon the tiny bas- 
 cule, he places the eglantine, the tea-rose, 
 the moss-rose. One after the other, beneath 
 the blade that slides and cuts, the flowers, 
 separated from their stems, fall in the gravel 
 of the path. 
 
 He picks them up and gazes at them 
 long. 
 
 He walks towards the shadowy 
 part of the garden, where nobody 
 passes, digs with his fingers a lit- 
 tle grave in the earth, lays in it ' 
 together the three executed flow- 
 ers, covers them with gravel and 
 with acacia-leaves. 
 Then he kneels down and weeps till even- 
 ing over the grave of the guilty roses.
 
 CHARLES-EUDES BONIN. 261 
 
 GLORIES. 
 
 > 
 
 M ^.^ HE immense circus is deserted. 
 ^^ * j Alone, in the imperial box, un- 
 ^^^ der the hangings of purple, a gold- 
 en Figure looks on : 
 
 In the sanded arena, unpolluted yet, fair 
 women in resplendent armor struggle, with 
 a joyous clashing steel. 
 
 Their light curls gush from under the 
 helmets smitten by the indefatigable swords, 
 and their white and naked arms are clasped 
 in mortal fury. 
 
 From their broken corselets burst the 
 wounded breasts, and blood now flows 
 among their locks. 
 
 And when one of the Amazons falls van- 
 quished upon the sand, red at last, she lifts 
 her dying eyes towards the imperial box, 
 whence mercy is to descend.
 
 262 
 
 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 And the Emperor, the young Caesar, with 
 smiling lips slowly reverses his thumb, en- 
 circled with a ring of gold, and makes the 
 gesture that condemns. 
 
 n. It is a night of panic and of sorrow, 
 
 when under the starless sky the City stifles 
 
 between its walls of bronze. 
 
 And along the streets and the porticos, 
 
 before the temples, at the feet of the gods, 
 
 the agonizing crowd listens in silence to the 
 
 distant voice of the great sea. 
 
 And lo ! among the winds of the high-sea 
 and the silence of the 
 crowd, a superhuman 
 voice arises and cries 
 out a name, while in 
 the dark heavens invis- 
 ible trumpets proclaim 
 a victory. 
 
 And on the thresh- 
 old of a temple a Man 
 is standing, who, before 
 the sea and before the 
 
 crowd, under the heavens and in the night, 
 
 lifts a great sign of Light.
 
 HENRI DE REGNIER. 265 
 
 the foot of the stairway, un- 
 der the sifted light of a 
 window whose panes, in the 
 shape of lozenges, are enchased in a net- 
 work of lead, a fantastic beast, Dragon or 
 Chimera, twists the coils of its tail and un- 
 clasps its sharp claws. With open jaws it 
 seems to yawn with weariness or roar with 
 rage. From its sinuous back, imbricated 
 with scales, springs a sheaf of rare flowers 
 that fall back to mirror themselves in the 
 polished and swollen flanks of the monster. 
 Reflections caress the carved wood, lustrous- 
 ly black and rigid as metal. 
 
 The stairway mounts, and plunges into 
 warm shadow the torsion of its wrought 
 balusters, which at every turn shine with a 
 glossy sheen. Along the wall tapestries, in
 
 266 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 the softness of their deadened tints, unroll 
 dreamy landscapes. They are bright and 
 joyous hangings, but time has changed 
 their colors. The pinks have whitened ; the 
 whites have become more eburnean and 
 more creamy; the greens have been trans- 
 muted into blues, blues melting into shades 
 more tender. And they offer sites of peace 
 and repose a nature calm and artificial, a 
 little chimerical, where one would fain lead 
 one's vagrant thoughts through those scenes 
 of joy and of happy siestas ; parks whose 
 alleys encircle lawns where the grass is rep- 
 resented by designs in arabesque ; sheets of 
 water bordered by vases and mythological 
 statues, losing themselves under the blue 
 shadow of the trees ; basins into which drip 
 over-full fountains. Cupids are at work gar- 
 dening, wheeling flowers, digging parterres, 
 letting harvests of roses overflow and fall 
 from their childish arms. At the end of 
 bluish avenues tranquil palaces rise in the 
 fair horizontality of their lines ; among the 
 trees flutter multicolor paroquets. And I 
 ascend, with my eyes full of the attenuated 
 charm of these old things, discolored and
 
 HENRI DE REGNIER. 267 
 
 soft as love a love already ancient that 
 makes my heart beat as I push open the 
 high door where run, underlining the wood- 
 work, threads of gold. And in the room 
 lightened by the shimmer of blue silks em- 
 broidered with light sprays, where fine cur- 
 tains fall from the windows, indolently she 
 is lying, stretched out on the divan, and lifts 
 towards me the ineffable and languishing 
 look of her eyes. 
 
 In the hollow of the stairway a round 
 lantern hung from a silver chain. The light 
 
 glintered along the balusters, and 
 stole from step to step, fainter and 
 fainter, leaving at the bottom the 
 vagueness and mystery of a hole of 
 shadows. And I descended slowiv,
 
 268 PASTELS IN PROSE. 
 
 with broken heart, carrying forever within 
 me the memory of her cold looks and of 
 her irremissible refusal. 
 
 The tapestries, whose colors were extin- 
 guished by the night, unrolled saddened land- 
 scapes ; among the woods lost in darkness 
 the multicolor paroquets were alone visible ; 
 the basins had disappeared ; the hedges 
 and grass made black spots in the design; 
 the cupids, with feet on their spades, seem- 
 ed to be digging a grave, and from their 
 arms overflowed pale roses, so pale that they 
 seemed like dead flowers ; and the fantastic 
 beast, Chimera or Dragon, was grinning 
 wickedly, threatening and bellicose. In 
 passing I took a flower, and the monster, 
 twisting his tail, swelled his flanks as though 
 to bark at my heels. 
 
 Through the dusk of the street, where were 
 being lighted the swinging lanterns, a gust 
 of wind passed, and the flower fell to pieces 
 in my hand.
 
 IN UNIFORM STYLE. 
 
 T^^9J^^J^MJ^S^^^^ n J ales - 
 
 By Guy de Maupassant. The Translation 
 by Jonathan Sturges. An Introduction by 
 Henry James. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. 
 
 MARIA : A South American Romance. By 
 Jorge Isaacs. The Translation by Rollo 
 Ogden. An Introduction by Thomas A. 
 Janvier. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 
 
 Sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United 
 States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt oj price.
 
 STACK 
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed. 
 
 4IOV 1 2000 
 JUL 93 2000
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL 
 
 A A 000000927 4