  "Close to your hand lies a little WITH FOUR PHOTOGRAVURESLONDONGREENING & CO31 ESSEX STREET, STRAND, W.C.1915Baudelaire
THE LIFE AND INTIMATE MEMOIRS OF CHARLES BAUDELAIREBY THÉOPHILE GAUTIERIThe first time that we met Baudelaire was towards the middle of the year 1849, at the HÔtel Pimodan, where we occupied, near Fernand Boissard, a strange apartment which communicated with his by a private staircase hidden in the thickness of the wall, and which was haunted by the spirits of beautiful women loved long since by Lauzun. The superb Maryx was to be found there who, in her youth, had posed for "La Mignon" of Scheffer, and later, for "La Gloire distribuant des couronnes" of Paul Delaroche; and that other beauty, then in all her splendour, from whom Clesinger modelled "La Femme au serpent," that statue where grief resembles a paroxysm of pleasure, and which throbs with an intensity of life that the chisel has never before attained and which can never be surpassed. Charles Baudelaire was then an almost unknown genius, preparing himself in the shadow for the light to come, with that tenacity of purpose which, in him, doubled inspiration; but his name was already becoming known amongst poets and artists, who heard it with a quivering of expectation, the younger generation almost venerating him. In the mysterious upper chamber where the reputations of the future are in the making he passed as the strongest. We had often heard him spoken of, but none of his works were known to us. His appearance was striking: he had closely shaved hair of a rich black, which fell over a forehead of extraordinary whiteness, giving his head the appearance of a Saracen helmet. His eyes, coloured like tobacco of Spain, had great depth and spirituality about them, and a certain penetration which was, perhaps, a little too insistent. As to the mouth, in which the teeth were white and perfect, it was seen under a slight and silky moustache which screened its contours. The mobile curves, voluptuous and ironical as the lips in a face painted by Leonardo da Vinci, the nose, fine and delicate, somewhat curved, with quivering nostrils, seemed ever to be scenting vague perfumes. A large dimple accentuated the chin, like the finishing touch of a sculptor's chisel on a statue; the cheeks, carefully shaved, with vermilion tints on the His clothing consisted of a paletot of shining black cloth, nut-coloured trousers, white stockings, and patent leather shoes; the whole fastidiously correct, with a stamp of almost English simplicity, intentionally adopted to distinguish himself from the artistic folk with the soft felt hats, the velvet waistcoats, red jackets, and strong, dishevelled beards. Nothing was too new or elaborate about him. Charles Baudelaire indulged in a certain dandyism, but he would do anything to take from his things the "Sunday clothes" appearance so dear and important to the Philistine, but so disagreeable to the true gentleman. Later, he shaved off his moustache, finding that it was the remains of an old picturesqueness which it was both childish and bourgeois to retain. Thus, relieved of all superfluous down, his head recalled that of Lawrence Sterne; a resemblance that was augmented by Baudelaire's habit of leaning his temple against his first finger, which is, as every one knows, the attitude of the English humorist in the portrait placed at the beginning of his books. Such was the physical impression made on us after our first meeting with the future author of "The Flowers of Evil." We find in the "Nouveaux CamÉes parisiens" "In a portrait painted by Émile Deroy, one of the rarest works of art by modern painters, we see Charles Baudelaire at twenty years of age, at a time when, rich, happy, well-loved, already becoming celebrated, he wrote his first verses which were applauded by Paris, the literary leader of the whole world! O rare example of a divine face, uniting all graces, power, and most irresistible seductiveness! The eyebrow well-marked and curved like a bow, the eyelid warm and softly coloured; the eye, large, black, deep and of unequalled fire, caressing and imperious, embraces, interrogates and reflects all that surrounds it; the nose, beautifully chiselled, slightly curved, makes us dream of the celebrated phrase of the poet: 'Mon Âme voltige sur les parfums, comme l'Âme des autres hommes voltige sur la musique!' The mouth is arched and refined by the mind, and at the moment is of the delicate tint that reminds one of the royal beauty of freshly plucked fruit. The chin is rounded, but nevertheless haughty and powerful as that of Balzac. The whole face is of a One must not take this portrait too literally. It is seen through the medium of painting and poetry, and embellished by a certain idealisation. Still, it is no less sincere and faithful of Baudelaire as he appeared at that time. Charles Baudelaire had his hour of supreme beauty and perfect expansion, and we relate it after this faithful witness. It is rare that a poet, an artist, is known in the spring-time of his charm. Reputation generally comes later, when the fatigue of study, the struggles of life, and the torture of passion have taken away youthfulness, leaving only the mask, faded and altered, on which each sorrow has made her impress. It is this last picture, which also has beauty, that one remembers. With his evasive singularity was mingled a certain exotic odour like the distant perfume of a country well loved of the sun. It is said that Baudelaire travelled for some time in India, and this fact explains much. Contrary to the somewhat loose manners of artists generally, Baudelaire prided himself upon Exaggeration, much in honour at Pimodan's, he disdained as theatrical and coarse, though he allowed himself the use of paradox. With a very simple, natural, and perfectly detached air, as though retailing, À la Prudhomme, a newspaper paragraph on the state of the weather, he would advance monstrous axioms, or uphold with perfect sang-froid some theory of mathematical extravagance; for he had method in the development of his follies. His spirit was neither in words nor traits; he saw things from a particular point of view which changed their outlines, as objects seen in a bird's-eye view are changed from when seen at their own elevation; he perceived analogies, inappreciable to others, the fantastic logic of which was very striking. His gestures were slow, sober, and rare; for he held southern gesticulation in horror. Neither did he like volubility of speech, and British reserve appealed to his sense of good form. One might describe him as a dandy strayed into Bohemia; Such was our impression of Baudelaire at our first meeting, the memory of which is as vivid as though it had occurred yesterday. We were in the big salon, decorated in the style of Louis XIV, the wainscot enriched and set off with dull gold of a perfect tone, projecting cornices, on which some pupil of Lesueur or of Poussin, having studied at the HÔtel Lambert, had painted nymphs chased by satyrs through reed-grass, according to the mythological taste of the period. On the great marble chimney, veined with vermilion and white, was placed, in the guise of a clock, a golden elephant, harnessed like the elephant of Porus in the battle of Lebrun, supporting on its back a tower with an inscribed dial-plate. The chairs and settees were old and covered with faded tapestry, representing subjects of the chase by Oudry and Desportes. It was in this salon, also, that the sÉances of the club of hashish-eaters took place, a club to which we belonged, the ecstasies, dreams, hallucinations of which, followed by the deepest dejection, we have described. As was said above, the owner of this apartment was Fernand Boissard, whose short, curly, fair hair, white and vermilion complexion, grey eyes No one was better equipped than Boissard. He had the most open-minded intelligence; he understood painting, poetry, and music equally well; but, in him, the dilettante was stronger than the artist. Admiration took up too much of his time; he exhausted himself in his enthusiasms. There is no doubt that, had necessity with her iron hand compelled him, he would have been an excellent painter. The success that was obtained by the "Episode de la retraite de Russie" would have been his sure guarantee. But, without abandoning painting, he allowed himself to be diverted by other arts. He played the violin, organised quartettes, studied Bach, Beethoven, Meyerbeer, and Mendelssohn, learnt languages, wrote criticisms, and composed some charming sonnets. He was a voluptuary in Art, and no one enjoyed real masterpieces with more refinement, passion, and sensuousness than he did. From force of admiring, he forgot to express beauty, and what he felt so deeply he came to believe he had created. Like Baudelaire, amorous of new and rare sensations, even when they were dangerous, he wished to know those artificial paradises, which, later, made him pay so dearly for their transient ecstasies. It was the abuse of hashish that, undoubtedly, undermined his constitution, formerly so robust and strong. This souvenir of a friend of our youth, with whom we lived under the same roof, of a romantic to whom fame did not come because he loved too much the work of others to dream of his own, will not be out of place here, in this introduction destined to serve as a preface to the complete works of a departed friend of us both. On the day of our visit Jean FeuchÈres, the sculptor, was there. Besides his talent in statuary, FeuchÈres had a remarkable power of imitation, such as no actor was able to compass. He was the inventor of the comic dialogues between Sergeant Bridais and gunner Pitou, which even to-day provoke irresistible laughter. FeuchÈres died first, and, of the four artists assembled on that day at the HÔtel Pimodan, we only survive. On the sofa, half recumbent, her elbow resting on a cushion, with an immobility of pose she often Near the window, the "Femme au serpent" (it is not permitted to give her name) having thrown back her lace wrap and delicate little green hood, such as never adorned Lucy Hocquet or Madame Baurand, over an arm-chair, shook out her beautiful fawn-brown hair, for she had come from the Swimming Baths, and, her person all draped in muslin, exhaled, like a naiad, the fragrant perfume of the bath. With her eyes and smile she encouraged this tilt of words, and threw in, now and again, her own remarks, sometimes mocking, sometimes appreciative. They have passed, those charming leisure hours, when poets, artists, and beautiful women were gathered together to talk of Art, literature, and love, as the century of Boccaccio has passed. Time, Death, the imperious necessities of life, have dispersed this mutually sympathetic group; but the memory is dear to all those who had the good fortune to be admitted to it. It is not without an involuntary sigh that these lines are penned. Shortly after this first meeting Baudelaire came From that moment a friendship was formed between us, in which Baudelaire always wished to conserve the attitude of favourite disciple to a sympathetic master, although he owed his success only to himself and his own originality. Never in our greatest familiarity did he relax that deference of manner which to us seemed excessive and with which we would gladly have dispensed. He acknowledged it À vive voix, and the dedication of the "Flowers of Evil" which is addressed to us, consecrates in its lapidary form the absolute expression of his loving and poetical devotion. If we insist on these details, it is not for their actual worth, but solely because they portray an unrecognised side of Baudelaire's character. This poet, whom people try to describe as of so satanic a nature, smitten with evil and depravity (literary, be it well understood), knew love and admiration in the highest degree. But the distinguishing feature of Satan is that he is incapable of admiration or love. The light wounds him, glory is a sight insupportable to him, and makes him want to veil his eyes with his bat-like wings. No one, even at the time of fervour for romanticism, had more respect and adoration for It would perhaps be fitting, after having portrayed Baudelaire in all the freshness of his youth and in the fulness of his power, to present him as he was during the later years of his life, before Death stretched out his hand towards him, and sealed the lips which will no longer speak here below. His face was thin and spiritualised; the eyes seemed larger, the nose thinner; the lips were closed mysteriously, and seemed to guard ironical secrets. The vermilion tints of the past had given place to a swarthy, tired yellow. As to the forehead, it had gained in grandeur and solidity—so to speak; one would have said that it was carved in some particularly durable marble. The fine hair, silky and long, nearly white, falling round a face which was young and old at the same time, gave him an almost sacerdotal appearance. Charles Baudelaire was born in Paris on April 21st, 1821, in an old turreted house, in the Rue Hautefeuille. He was the son of M. Baudelaire, the old friend of Condorcet and of Cabanis, a distinguished and well-educated man who retained the polished manners of the eighteenth century, which the In his young days Baudelaire was in no way out of the ordinary, and neither did he gain many laurels at his college prize distributions. He even found the B.A. examination a great difficulty, and his degree was honorary. Troubled by abstract questions, this boy, so fine of spirit and keen of intelligence, appeared almost like an idiot. We have no intention of declaring this inaptitude as a sign of cleverness; but, under the eye of the pedagogue, often distrait and idle, or rather preoccupied, the real man is formed little by little, unperceived by masters or parents. M. Baudelaire died, and his wife, Charles's mother, married General Aupick, who became Ambassador to Constantinople. Dissension soon arose in the family À propos of young Baudelaire's desire for a literary career. We think it wrong to reproach parents with the fears they manifest when the gift of poetry develops in their offspring. Alas! They are right. To what sad, precarious, and miserable existence does he vow himself—he who takes up a literary career? From that day he must consider himself cut off from human beings, active life; he no longer lives—he is the spectator of life. All sensation comes to him as motif for analysis. We do not exaggerate the picture; but we have before us only the talented poets, crowned with glory, who have, at the last, succumbed on the breast of their ideal. What would it be if we went down into the Limbo where the shades of still-born children are wailing, like those abortive endeavours and larvÆ of thought which can achieve Faith is not enough. Another gift is necessary. In literature, as in religion, work without grace is futile. Although they do not suspect this region of anguish, for, to know it really, it is necessary to go down oneself, not under the guidance of a Vergil or a Dante, but under that of a Lousteau, of a Lucien de RubemprÉ, parents instinctively display the perils and suffering of the artistic life in the endeavour to dissuade the children they love, and for for whom they desire one more happy and ordinarily human. Once only since the earth has revolved round the sun have parents ardently wished to have a son's life dedicated to poetry. The child received the most brilliant literary education, and, with the irony of Fate, became Chapelain, the author of "La Pucelle"! and this, one might even say, was to play with sinister fortune! To turn his stubborn ideas into another course, Baudelaire was made to travel. He was sent a great distance, embarking on a vessel, the captain of which took him to the Indian seas. He visited the Isles of Mauritius, Bourbon, Madagascar, Ceylon perhaps, and some parts of the "Isle of the Ganges"; but he would not, for all that, give up his intention of becoming a man of letters. They In his verses he was frequently led from the mists and mud of Paris to the countries of light, azure, and perfume. Between the lines of the most sombre of his poems, a window is opened through which can be seen, instead of the black chimneys and smoky roofs, the blue Indian seas, or a beach of golden sand on which the slender figure of a Malabaraise, half naked, carrying an amphora on the head, is running. Without penetrating too deeply into the private life of the poet, one can imagine that it was during this voyage that Baudelaire fell in love with the "Venus noire," of whom he was a worshipper all his life. When he returned from his distant travels he had just attained his majority; there was no longer any reason—not even financial, for he was rich for some time at least—to oppose Baudelaire's choice of a vocation; it was only strengthened by Lodged in a little apartment under the roof of the same HÔtel Pimodan where later we met him, as has been related earlier in this introduction, he commenced that life of work, interrupted and resumed, of varied studies, of fruitful idleness, which is that of each man of letters seeking his particular field of labour. Baudelaire soon found his. He conceived something beyond romanticism—a land unexplored, a sort of rough and wild Kamtschatka; and it was at the extreme verge that he built for himself, as Sainte-Beuve, who thoroughly appreciated him, said, a kiosque of bizarre architecture. Several of the poems which are to be found amongst the "Flowers of Evil" were already composed. Baudelaire, like all born poets, from the start possessed a form and style of which he was master; it was more accentuated and polished later, but still the same. Baudelaire has often been accused of studied bizarrerie, of affected and laboured originality, and especially of mannerisms. This is a point at which it is necessary to pause before going further. There are people who have naturally an affected manner. In them simplicity would be pure affectation, a sort of inverted mannerism. Long practice is necessary to be naturally simple. The circumvolutions of the brain Baudelaire had a brain like this, and where the critic has tried to see labour, effort, excess, there is only the free and easy manifestation of individuality. These poems, of a savour so exquisitely strange, cost him no more than any badly rhymed commonplace. Baudelaire, always possessed of great admiration for the old masters, never felt it incumbent upon him to take them for models; they had had the good fortune to arrive in the early days of the world, at the dawn, so to speak, of humanity, when nothing had been expressed yet, and each form, each image, each sentiment, had the charm of virginal novelty. The great commonplaces which form the foundation of human thought were then in all their glory and sufficed for simple geniuses, speaking to simple people. But, from force of repetition, these general subjects of verse were used up like money which, As true innocence charms, so the trickery of pretended innocence disgusts and displeases. The quality of the nineteenth century is not precisely naÏvetÉ, and it needs, to render its thoughts and dreams explicit, idiom a little more composite than that employed in the classics. Literature is like a day; it has its morning, noon, evening, and night. Without vain expatiation as to whether one should prefer dawn or twilight, one ought to paint the hour which is at hand, and with a palette of all the colours necessary to give it its full effect. Has not sunset its beauty as well as dawn? The copper-reds, the bronze-golds, the turquoise melting to sapphire, all the tints which blend and pass away in the great final conflagration, the light-pierced clouds which seem to take the form of a falling aerial Babel—have they not as much to offer to the poet as the rosy-fingered Dawn? But the time when the Hours preceded the Chariot of Day is long since fled. The poet of the "Flowers of Evil" loved what is unwisely known as the style of the decadence, and which is no other thing than Art arrived at that point of extreme maturity that determines civilisations which have grown old; ingenious, This style of the decadence is the "dernier mot" of Verbe, summoned to express all and to venture to the very extremes. One can recall, À propos of him, language already veined with the greenness of decomposition, savouring of the Lower Roman Empire and the complicated refinements of the Byzantine School, the last form of Greek Art fallen into deliquescence; but such is the necessary and fatal idiom of peoples and civilisations where an artificial life has replaced a natural one and developed in a man who does not know his own needs. It is not easy, moreover, this style condemned by pedants, for it expresses new ideas in new forms and words that have never been heard of before. Contrary to the classical style, it admits of backgrounds where the spectres of superstition, the haggard phantoms of dreams, the terrors of night, remorse which leaps out and falls back noiselessly, obscure fantasies that astonish the day, and all that the soul in its deepest depths and Thus Baudelaire, who, despite his ill success at his baccalaureate examination, was a good Latinist, preferred undoubtedly, to Vergil and to Cicero, Apuleius, Juvenal, Saint Augustine, and Tertullian, whose style has the black radiance of ebony. He went even to the Latin of the Church, to hymns and chants in which the rhyme represents the old forgotten rhythm, and he has addressed, under the title of "FranciscÆ meÆ Laudes," "To an erudite and devotee," such are the terms of the dedication, a Latin poem rhymed in the form that Brizeux called ternary, which is composed of three rhymes following one another, instead e of alternating as in the tiercet of Dante. To this odd piece of work is joined a note no less singular. We transcribe it here, for it explains and corroborates what has just been said about the idioms of the decadence: "Does it not seem to the reader, as to me, that the language of the last Latin decadence—the supreme sigh of the strong man already transformed and prepared for the spiritual life—is It is unnecessary to push this point further. Baudelaire, when he had not to express some curious deviation, some unknown side of the soul, employed pure, clear language, so correct and exact that even the most difficult to please would find nothing to complain of. This is especially noticeable in his prose writings, when he treats of more general and less abstruse subjects than in his verse. With regard to his philosophical and literary tenets, they were those of Edgar Allan Poe, whom he had not then translated but whom he greatly admired. One can apply to him the phrases that he himself wrote of the American author in the preface to the "Extraordinary Histories ":—"He He hated evil as a mathematical deviation, and, in his quality of a perfect gentleman, he scorned it as unseemly, ridiculous, bourgeois and squalid. If he has often treated of hideous, repugnant, and unhealthy subjects, it is from that horror and fascination which makes the magnetised bird go down into the unclean mouth of the serpent; but more than once, with a vigorous flap of his wings, he breaks the charm and flies upwards to bluer and more spiritual regions. He should have engraved on his seal as a device the words "Spleen et IdÉal," which form the title of the first part of his book of verse. If his bouquet is composed of strange flowers, of metallic colourings and exotic perfumes, the calyx of which, instead of joy contains bitter tears and drops of aqua-tofana, he can reply that he planted but a few into the black soil, saturating them in putrefaction, as the soil of a cemetery dissolves the corpses of preceding centuries among mephitic miasmas. Undoubtedly roses, marguerites, violets, are the more agreeable spring flowers; but he thinks little of them in the black mud with which the pavements of the town are He watches the budding of evil instincts, the ignoble habits idly acquired in degradation. And, from this sight which attracts and repels him, he becomes incurably melancholy; for he thinks himself no better than others, and allows the pure arc of the heavens and the brilliancy of the stars to be veiled by impure mists. With these ideas one can well understand that Baudelaire believed in the absolute self-government of Art, and that he would not admit that poetry should have any end outside itself, or any mission to fulfil other than that of exciting in the soul of the reader the sensation of supreme beauty—beauty in the absolute sense of the term. To this sensation he liked to add a certain effect of surprise, astonishment, Such principles are apt to astonish us, when we read certain of the poems of Baudelaire in which horror seems to be sought like pleasure; but that we should not be deceived, this horror is always transfigured by character and effect, by a ray of Rembrandt, or a trait of Velasquez, who portrayed the race under sordid deformity. In stirring up in his cauldron all sorts of fantastically odd and enormous ingredients, Baudelaire can say, with the witches of Macbeth, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair." This sort of intentional ugliness is not, then, in contradiction to the supreme aim of Art; and the poems, such as the "Sept Vieillards" and the "Petits Vieilles," have snatched from the poetical Saint John who dreams in Patmos this phrase, which characterises so well the author of the "Flowers of Evil": "You have endowed the sky of Art with one knows not what macabre ray; you have created a new frisson." But it is, so to speak, only the shadow of the talent of Baudelaire, a shadow ardently fiery or But, instead of writing of the poet's ideas, it would be infinitely better to allow him to speak for himself: "Poetry, little as one wishes to penetrate one's self, to question one's soul, to recall the memories of past enthusiasm, has no other end than itself; it cannot have any other, and no poem will be so great, so noble, so truly worthy of the name of poem, as that which is written purely from the pleasure of writing. "I do not say that poetry does not ennoble tastes—be it well understood—that its final result is not to raise men above vulgar interests. This would be an obvious absurdity. I say that, if the poet has followed a moral aim, he has diminished his poetical power, and it would not be imprudent to lay a wager that his work will be bad. Poetry is unable, under pain of death or decay, to assimilate itself to morals or science. "It has not Truth as an object; it has Itself. The demonstration of Truth is elsewhere. "Truth has only to do with songs; all that gives charm and grace to a song will give to Truth its authority and power. Coldness, calmness, impassivity, drive back the diamonds and flowers of "The Pure Intellect aspires to Truth, Taste informs us of Beauty, and Moral Sense teaches us Duty. It is true that the middle sense is intimately connected with the other two, and is only separated from the Moral Sense by very slight divergences, so that Aristotle has not hesitated to place some of its operations among the virtues themselves. Also, that which especially exasperates the man of Taste in the sight of Vice is its deformity and disproportion. Vice outrages justice and truth, revolts the Intellect and Conscience; but, like an outrage in harmony—a dissonance—it wounds more particularly certain poetical natures, and I do not believe it would be scandalous to consider all infraction of moral, the beautiful moral, as a fault against rhythm and universal prosody. "It is this admirable, this immortal instinct of Beauty which makes us consider the earth and all its manifold forms, sounds, odours, sentiments, as a hint of, and correspondence to, Heaven. The insatiable thirst for that which is beyond and which veils life, is the most lively proof of our immortality. It is at once by and through poetry, by and through music, that the soul gets a glimpse of the splendours beyond the tomb. And, when an exquisite poem brings tears to the eyes, these tears are not the proof of an excess of joy, they are "Thus, the principle of poetry is, strictly and simply, the Human Aspiration towards Supreme Beauty; and the manifestation of this principle is in the enthusiasm, the awakening of the soul, enthusiasm quite independent of that passion, which is the intoxication of the heart, and of that Truth, which is the Food of Reason. For passion is a natural thing, too natural even not to introduce a wounding note, discordant in the domain of un-sullied Beauty; too familiar and too violent not to degrade pure Desires, gracious Melancholies and noble Despairs, which inhabit the supernatural regions of Poetry." Although few poets have a more spontaneously sparkling inspiration and originality than Baudelaire—doubtless through distaste for the false poetic style which affects to believe in the descent of a tongue of fire on the writer painfully rhyming a strophe—he pretended that the true author provoked, directed, and modified at will this mysterious power of literary production; and we find in a very curious piece which precedes the translation of Edgar Poe's celebrated poem "The Raven," the following lines, half ironical, half serious, in which Baudelaire's own opinion is set "The poetic principle, which makes the rules of poetry, is formulated, it is said, and modelled after the poems. Here is a poet who pretends that his poems have been composed according to technique or principle. He had certainly great genius and more inspiration than is general, if by inspiration one understands energy, intellectual enthusiasm, and the power of keeping all his faculties on the alert. He loved work more than anything else; he liked to repeat, he, the finished original, that originality is something needing apprenticeship, which does not necessarily mean to say that it is a thing to be transmitted by instruction. Chance and incomprehensibility were his two great enemies. Has he willingly diminished that faculty which was in him to take the most beautiful part? I should be inclined to think so; however, one must not forget that his genius, so ardent and agile, was passionately fond of analysis, combination, and calculation. One of his favourite axioms was the following: 'Everything in a poem as in a novel, everything in a sonnet as in a novelette, ought to contribute to the dÉnouement. A good writer has the last line already in his mind when he writes the first.' "Owing to this admirable method the writer was able to begin even at the end, and work, when it This last phrase is characteristic and betrays the individual taste of the poet for artificiality. He, moreover, does not hide this predilection. He takes pleasure in this kind of composite beauty, and now and then a little artificiality that elaborates advanced and unsound civilisations. Let us say, to take a concrete example, that he would prefer to a simple young girl who used no other cosmetic than water, a more mature woman employing all the resources of the accomplished coquette, in front of a dressing-table covered with bottles of essences, de lait virginal, ivory brushes, and curling-tongs. The sweet perfume of skin macerated in aromatics, like that of Esther, who was steeped in oil of palms for six months and six months in cinnamon, before presentation to King Ahasuerus, had on him a powerful effect. A light touch of rose or hortensia on a fresh cheek, beauty-spots carefully and provocatively placed at the corner of the mouth He liked these touches of Art upon Nature, the high lights, the strong lights placed by a clever hand to augment grace, charm and the character of the face. It is not he who would write virtuous tirades against painting, rougeing, and the crinoline. All that removed a man, and especially a woman, from the natural state found favour in his eyes. These tastes explain themselves and ought to be understandable in a poet of the decadence, and the author of the "Flowers of Evil." We shall astonish no one if we add that he preferred, to the simple perfume of the rose or violet, that of benzoin, amber, and even musk, so little appreciated in our days, and also the penetrating aroma of certain exotic flowers the perfume of which is too strong for our moderate climate. Baudelaire had, in the matter of perfumes, a strangely subtle sensuality which is rarely to be met with except amongst Orientals. He sought it always, and the phrase cited by Banville and at the commencement of this article may very justly be said of him: "Mon Âme voltige sur les parfums comme l'Âme des autres hommes voltige sur la musique." He loved also toilets of a bizarre elegance, a capricious richness, striking fantasy, in which something of the comedian and courtesan was mingled, although he himself was severely conventional in dress; but this taste, excessive, singular, anti-natural, nearly always opposed to classical beauty, was for him the sign of the human will correcting, to its taste, the forms and colours furnished by matter. Where the philosopher could only find a text for declamation he found a proof of grandeur. Depravity—that is to say, a step aside from the normal type—is impossible to the stupid. It is for the same reason that inspired poets, not having the control and direction of their works, caused him a sort of aversion, and why he wished to introduce art and technique even into originality. So much for the metaphysical; but Baudelaire was of a subtle, complicated, reasoning, and paradoxical nature, and had more philosophy than is general amongst poets. The Æsthetics of his art occupied him much; he abounded in systems which he tried to realise, and all that he did was first planned out. According to him, literature ought to be intentional, and the accidental restrained as much as possible. This, however, did not prevent him, in true poetical fashion, from profiting by the happy chances of executing those beauties which burst forth suddenly without IIBaudelaire's reputation, which during some years had not extended beyond the limits of the little circle who rallied round the new poet, widened suddenly when he presented himself to the public holding in his hand the bouquet of the "Flowers of Evil," a bouquet which in no way resembled the innocent posy of the dÉbutante. Some of the poems were so subtly suggestive, yet so abstruse and enveloped with the forms and veils of Art, that the authorities demanded that they should be withdrawn and replaced by others of less dangerous eccentricity, before the book could be comprised in libraries. Ordinarily, there is no great excitement about a book of verses; they are born, live, and die in silence; for two or three poets suffice for our intellectual consummation. In the excitement, rumour, and allayed scandal which surrounded Baudelaire, it was recognised that he had given the public, which is a rare occurrence, original work of a peculiar savour. To "Flowers of Evil" was one of those happy titles that are more difficult to find than is generally imagined. He summed up in a brief and poetical form the general idea of the book and indicated its tendencies. Although it was evidently romantic in intention and composition, it was impossible, by even ever so frail a thread, to connect Baudelaire with any one of the great masters of that particular school. His verses, refined and subtle in structure, encasing the subjects dealt with so closely as to resemble armour rather than clothing, at first appeared difficult and obscure. This feeling was caused, not through any fault of the author, but from the novelty of the things he expressed—things that had not before been made vocal. It was part of Baudelaire's doctrine that, to attain his end, a poet must invent language and rhythm for himself. But he could not prevent surprise on the part of the reader when confronted with verse so different from any he had read before. In painting the evils which horrified him, Baudelaire knew how to find the morbidly rich tints of decomposition, the tones of mother-of-pearl which freeze stagnant waters, the roses of consumption, the pallor of chlorosis, the hateful bilious yellows, the leaden grey of pestilential fogs, the poisoned The book is opened by a poem to the reader, whom the poet does not attempt to cajole, as is usual, and to whom he tells the absolute truth. He accuses him, in spite of all his hypocrisy, of having the vices for which he blames others, and of nourishing in his own heart that great modern monster, Ennui, who, with his bourgeois cowardice, dreams of the ferocity and debauches of the Romans, of bureaucrat Nero, and shop-keeper Heliogabalus. One other poem, of great beauty, and entitled, undoubtedly by an ironical antiphrasis, "Benediction," depicts the coming of the poet to the world, an object of astonishment and aversion to his mother as a shameful offspring. We see him pursued by stupidity, envy, and sarcasm, a prey to the perfidious cruelty of some Delilah, happy in delivering him up to the Philistines, naked, disarmed, after having expended on him all the refinements of a ferocious coquetry. Then there is his arrival, after insults, miseries, tortures, purified in the crucible of sorrow, to eternal glory, One little poem which follows later, and which is entitled "Soleil," closes with a sort of tacit justification of the poet in his vagrant courses. A bright ray shines on the muddy town; the author is going out and runs through the unclean streets, the by-ways where the closed shutters hide indications of secret luxuries; all the black, damp, dirty labyrinths of old streets to the houses of the blind and leprous, where the light shines here and there on some window, on a pot of flowers, or on the head of a young girl. Is not the poet like the sun which alone enters everywhere, in the hospital as in the palace, in the hovel as in the church, always divine, letting his golden radiance fall on the carrion or on the rose? "ÉlÉvation" shows us the poet floating in the sky, beyond the starry spheres; in the luminous ether; on the confines of our universe; disappearing into the depths of infinity like a tiny cloud; intoxicating himself with that rare and salubrious air where there are none of the miasmas pertaining to the earth and only the pure ether breathed by the angels. We must not forget that Baudelaire, although he has often been accused of materialism, and reproached for expending his talent upon doubtful subjects, is, on the contrary, endowed Undoubtedly Baudelaire, in this book dedicated to the painting of depravity and modern perversity, has framed repugnant pictures, where vice is laid bare to wallow in all the ugliness of its shame; but the poet, with supreme contempt, scornful indignation, and a constant recurrence towards the ideal which is so often lacking in satirical writers, stigmatises and marks with an indelible red iron the unhealthy flesh, plastered with unguents and white lead. In no part is the thirst for pure air, the immaculate whiteness of the Himalayan snows, the azure without blot, the unfading light, more strong and ardent than in the poems that have been termed immoral, as if the flagellation of vice was vice itself, and as if one is a poisoner for having written of the poisonous pharmacy of the Borgia. This method is by no means new, but it thrives always, and certain people pretend to believe that one cannot read the "Flowers of Evil" except with a We have read Baudelaire's poems often, and we are not struck dead with convulsed face and blackened body, as though we had supped with Vanozza in a vineyard of Pope Alexander VI. All such foolishness—unfortunately detrimental, for all the fools enthusiastically adopt that attitude—would make any artist worthy of the name but shrug his shoulders when told that blue is moral and scarlet immoral. It is rather as if one said: "The potato is virtuous, henbane is criminal." A charming poem on perfumes classifies them, rousing ideas, sensations, and memories. Some are fresh, like the flesh of an infant, green like the fields in spring, recalling the blush of dawn and carrying with them the thoughts of innocence. Others, like musk, amber, benzoin, nard, and incense, are superb, triumphant, worldly, and provoke coquetry, love, luxury, festivities, and splendours. If one transposed them into the sphere of colours, they would represent gold and purple. The poet often recurs to this idea of the significance of perfumes. Surrounding a tawny beauty from the Cape, who seemed to have a mission for sleeping off home sickness, he spoke of this mixed odour "of musk and havana" which transported her soul to the well-loved lands of the Sun, where the leaves of the palm-trees make fans in the blue and tepid From the open cupboard comes the mustiness of the past, feeble perfumes of robes, laces, powder-boxes, which revive memories of old loves and antiquated elegance; and, if by chance one uncorks a rancid and sticky phial, an acrid smell of English salts and vinegar escapes, a powerful antidote to the modern pestilence. In many À passage this preoccupation with aroma appears, surrounding with a subtle cloud all persons and things. In very few of the poets do we find this care. Generally they are content with putting light, colour, and music in their verses; but it is rare that they pour in that drop of pure essence with which Baudelaire's muse never failed to moisten the sponge or the cambric of his handkerchief. Since we are recounting the individual likings and minor passions of the poet, let us say that he adored cats—like him, amorous of perfumes, and who are thrown into a sort of epileptical ecstasy by the scent of valerian. He loved these charming, tranquil, mysterious, gentle animals, with their It is said that cats divine the thoughts which the brain transmits to the pen, and that, stretching out their paws, they wish to seize the written passage. They are happy in silence, order, and quietude, and no place suits them better than the study of a literary man. They wait patiently until his task is done, all the time purring gently and rhythmically in a sort of sotto voce accompaniment. Sometimes they gloss over with their tongue some disordered fur; for they are clean, careful, coquettish, and will not allow of any irregularity in their toilet, but all is done quietly and discreetly as though they feared to distract or hinder. Their caresses are tender, delicate, silent, feminine, having nothing in common with the clamorous, clumsy petulance that is found in dogs, to whom all the sympathy of the vulgar is given. All these merits were appreciated by Baudelaire, who has more than once addressed beautiful poems to cats—the "Flowers of Evil" contain three— It also must be added that in these sweet animals there is a nocturnal side, mysterious and cabalistic, which was very attractive to the poet. The cat, with his phosphoric eyes, which are like lanterns and stars to him, fearlessly haunts the darkness, where he meets wandering phantoms, sorcerers, alchemists, necromancers, resurrectionists, lovers, pickpockets, assassins, grey patrols, and all the obscene spectres of the night. He has the appearance of knowing the latest sabbatical chronicle, and he will willingly rub himself against the lame leg of Mephistopheles. His nocturnal serenades, his loves on the tiles, accompanied by cries like those of a child being murdered, give him a certain satanical air which justifies up to a certain point the repugnance of diurnal and practical minds, for whom the mysteries of Erebus have not the slightest attraction. But a doctor Faustus, in his cell littered with books and instruments of alchemy, would love always to have a cat for a companion. Baudelaire himself was a voluptuous, cajoling cat, with just its velvety manners, alluring mysteries, instinct with power concealed in suppleness, Many women pass through the poems of Baudelaire, some veiled, some half discernible, but to whom it is impossible to attribute names. They are rather types than individuals. They represent l'Éternel fÉminin, and the love that the poet expresses for them is the love and not a love. We have seen that in his theories he did not admit of individual passion, finding it too masterful, too familiar and violent. Among these women some symbolise unconscious and almost bestial prostitution, with plastered and painted masks, eyes brightened with kohl, mouths tinted with scarlet, seeming like open wounds, false hair and jewels; others, of a colder corruption, more clever and more perverse, like marchionesses of Marteuil of the nineteenth century, transpose the vice of the body to the soul. They are haughty, icy, bitter, finding pleasure only in wickedness; insatiable as sterility, mournful as ennui, having only hysterical and foolish fancies, and deprived, like the devil, of the power of love. Gifted with a dreadful beauty, almost spectral, that does not animate life, they march to their deaths, pale, insensible, superbly contemptuous, on the hearts they have crushed under their heels. From the departure of these amours, allied to hate, From the depths of his fall, his errors, and his despairs, it is towards this celestial image, as towards the Madonna of Bon-Secours, that he extends his arms with cries, tears, and a profound contempt for himself. In his hours of loving melancholy it is always with her he wishes to fly away and hide his perfect happiness in some mysterious fairy refuge, some cottage of Can one see in this Beatrice, this Laura whom no name designates, a real young girl or woman, passionately loved by the poet during his life-time? It would be romantic to suppose so, but it has not been permitted to us to be intimate enough with the secret life of his soul to answer this question affirmatively or negatively. In his metaphysical conversations, Baudelaire spoke much of his ideas, little of his sentiments, and never of his actions. As to the chapter of his loves, he for ever placed a seal upon his fine and disdainful lips. The safest plan would be to see in this ideal love a pleading only of the soul, the soaring of the unsatisfied heart, and the eternal sigh of the imperfect aspiring to the absolute. At the end of the "Flowers of Evil" there is a set of poems on "Wine," and the different intoxications that it produces, according to the brain it attacks. It is unnecessary to say that they are not Bacchic songs celebrating the juice of the grape, or anything like it. They are hideous and terrible paintings of drunkenness, but without the morality of Hogarth. The picture has no need of a legend and the "Wine of the Workman" makes one shudder. The "Litanies of Satan," god of evil and prince of the world, are one of those cold, If he has painted vice and shown Satan in all his pomp, it is without the least complacence in the task. He also had a singular prepossession of the devil as a tempter in whom he saw a dragon who hurried him into sin, infamy, crime, and perversity. Fault in Baudelaire was always followed by remorse, contempt, anguish, despair; and the punishment was far worse than any corporal one could have been. But enough of this subject; we are critic, not theologian. Let us point out, among the poems which comprise the "Flowers of Evil," some of the most remarkable; amongst others, that which is called, "Don Juan aux Enfers." It is a picture of tragic grandeur, painted in sombre and magisterial colours on the fiery vault of hell. The boat glides on the black waters, carrying Don Juan and his cortÈge of victims. The beggar whom he tried to make deny God, wretched athlete, proud in his rags like Antisthenes, paddles the oars to the domain of Charon. At the stern, a man of stone, a discoloured phantom, By its serene melancholy, its cheerful tranquillity, and oriental kief the poem entitled "La Vie AntÉrieure" contrasts happily with the sombre pictures of monstrous modern Paris, and shows that the artist has, on his palette, side by side with the blacks, bitumens, umbers, and siennas, a whole gamut of fresh tints: light, transparent, delicate roses, ideal blues, like the far-away Breughel of Paradise, with which to depict the Elysian Fields and mirage of his dreams. It is well to note particularly the sentiment towards the artificial betrayed by the poet. By the word artificial one must understand a creation ThÉophile Gautier Is it not a strange fantasy, this composition made from rigid elements, in which nothing lives, throbs, breathes, and where not a blade of grass, not a leaf, not a flower comes to derange the These are, undoubtedly, strange imaginings, anti-natural, neighbours of hallucination and expressions of a secret desire for unattainable novelty; but, for our part, we prefer them to the insipid simplicity of the pretended poets who, on the threadbare canvas of the commonplace, embroider, with old wools faded in colour, designs of bourgeois triviality or of foolish sentimentality: crowns of roses, green leaves of cabbages, and doves pecking one another. Sometimes we do not fear to attain the rare at the expense of the shocking, the fantastic, and the exaggerated. Barbarity of language appeals to us more than platitude. Baudelaire has this advantage: he can be bad, but he is never common. His faults, like his good qualities, are original, and, even when he has displeased, he has, after long reasoning, willed it so. Let us bring this analysis, already rather too long, however much we abridge it, to a close by a few words on that poem which so astonished Victor Hugo—"Petites Vieilles" The poet, walking in the streets of Paris, sees some little old women with humble and sad gait pass by. He follows them as one would pretty women, recognising from IIIThe question of versification and scansion, disdained by all those who have no appreciation of form—and they are numerous to-day—has been rightly judged by Baudelaire as one of the utmost importance. Nothing is more common now than to mistake technique in art for poetry itself. These are things which have no relation. FÉnelon, J. J. Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint Pierre, Chateaubriand, George Sand are poetic in principle, but not poets—that is to say, they are "But, À propos of Boileau, must I then accept this strange judgment of a man of esprit, this contemptuous opinion that M. Taine takes of him, and fear to endorse it in passing?—'There are two sorts of verse in Boileau: the most numerous, which are those of a pupil of the third form of his school; the less numerous, which are those of a pupil of rhetoric.' The man of letters who speaks thus (Guillaume Guizot) does not feel that Boileau is a poet, and, I will go further, he ought not to be sensible of poetry in such a poet. I understand that one does not put all the poetry into the metre; but I cannot at all understand that, when the point in question is Art, one takes no account of Art itself, and depreciates the perfect workers who excel in it. Suppress with a single blow all the poetry in verse, or else speak with The verse of Baudelaire is written according to modern methods and reform. The mobility of the cesura, the use of the mot d'ordre, the freedom of expression, the writing of a single Alexandrine, the clever mechanism of prosody, the turn of the stanza and the strophe—whatever its individual formula, its tabulated structure, its secrets of metre—bear the stamp of Baudelaire's sleight of hand, if one may express it thus. His signature, C. B., claims each rhyme he has made. Among his poems there are many pieces which have the apparent disposition and exterior design of a sonnet, though "sonnet" is not written at the head of each of them. That undoubtedly comes from a literary scruple, and a prosodical conscience, the origin of which seems to us traceable to an article where he recounts his visit to us and relates our conversation. It must not be forgotten that he had just brought us a volume of verses of two absent friends, that he was commissioned to make known, and we remarked these At this period the greater part of the "Flowers of Evil" was already composed, and in it there are to be found a large number of libertine sonnets, which not only have the quadruple rhyme, but in which also the rhymes are alternated in a quite irregular manner. The young scholar always allows himself a number of libertine sonnets, and we avow it is particularly disagreeable to us. Why, if one wishes to be free and to arrange the rhyme according to individual fancy, choose a fixed form which admits of no digression, no caprice? The irregular in what should be regular, lack of form in what should be symmetrical—what can be more illogical and annoying? Each infraction of a rule disturbs us like a doubtful or a false note. The sonnet is a sort of poetical fugue in which the theme ought to pass and repass until its final resolution in a given form. One must be absolutely subservient to law, or else, if one finds these laws antiquated, pedantic, cramping, not write sonnets at all. Baudelaire often sought musical effect by one Like Longfellow and Poe, Baudelaire sometimes employed alliteration; that is to say, the repetition of a certain consonant to produce in the interior of the verse a harmonious effect. Sainte-Beuve, to whom none of these delicate touches is unknown, and who continually practises them in his exquisite art, has once said in an Italian sonnet of deep gentleness: "Sorrente m'a rendu mon doux reve infini." Any sensitive ear can understand the charm of this liquid sound four times repeated, and which seems to sweep one away to the infinity of a dream, like the wing of a gull in the surging blue of a Neapolitan sea. Alliteration is often to be found in the prose of Beaumarchais, and the Scandinavian poets make great use of it. These trifles will undoubtedly appear frivolous to utilitarians, progressive and practical men who think, Many-syllabled and full-sounding words pleased Baudelaire, and, with three or four of these, he often makes a line which seems immense, the sound of which is vibrant and prolongs the metre. For the poet, words have in themselves, and apart from the meanings they express, intrinsic beauty and value, like precious stones still uncut and not set in bracelets, in necklaces or in rings. They charm the connoisseur who watches and sorts them in the little chalice where they are put in reserve, as a goldsmith would his jewels. There are words of diamond, ruby, sapphire, emerald, and others which glisten phosphorescently when struck. The great Alexandrines of which we have spoken, that come in times of lull and calm to die on the shore in the tranquillity and gentle undulation of the swelling surge, sometimes dash themselves to pieces in the foam and throw up their white spray against the sullen rocks, only to be tossed back immediately into the salt sea. The lines of eight feet are brisk, strong, striking, like a cat-o'-nine-tails, lashing the shoulders of In these eight-feet lines he paints sinister skies where, above the gibbet, rolls a moon, grown sickly from the incantations of Canidies. He describes the chill ennui of a dead person, who has exchanged his bed of luxury for the coffin, who dreams in his solitude, starting at each drop of icy rain that filters through his coffin-lid. He shows us, in his curiously disordered bouquet of faded flowers, old letters, ribbons, miniatures, pistols, daggers, and phials of laudanum. We see the room of the coward gallant where, in his absence, the ironical spectre of suicide comes, for Death itself cannot quench the fires of lust. IVFrom the composition of the verses let us pass to the style. Baudelaire intertwines his silken and golden threads with strong, rude hemp, as in a cloth worked by Orientals, at the same time gorgeous and coarse, where the most delicate ornamentations run in charming caprice on the "The Flowers of Evil" are the brightest gem in Baudelaire's crown. In them he has given play to his originality, and shown that one is able, after incalculable volumes of verse where every variety of subject seems to be exhausted, to bring to light something new and unexpected, without hauling down the sun and the stars, or making universal history file past as in a German fresco. But what has especially made his name famous is his translation of Edgar Poe; for in France little is read of the poet except his prose, and it is the feuilletons that make the poems known. Baudelaire has almost naturalised for us this singular and rare individuality, so pregnant, so exceptional, who at first rather scandalised than charmed America. Not that his work is in any way morally shocking—he is, on the contrary, of virginal and seraphic chastity; but because he disturbed accepted principles and practical common sense, and, also, because there was no criterion by which to judge him. Edgar Poe had none of the American ideas on progress, perfectibility, democratic institutions, and other subjects of declamation dear to the Philistines of the two worlds. He was not a worshipper of the god of gold; he loved poetry for itself and preferred beauty to utility—enormous heresy! Still, he had the good fortune to write well things that made the hair of fools in all countries stand on end. A grave director of a review or journal—a friend of Poe, moreover, and well-intentioned—avowed that it was difficult to employ him, and that one was obliged to pay him less than others, because he wrote above the heads of the vulgar—admirable reason! The biographer of the author of the "Raven" and "Eureka," said that Edgar Poe, if he had regulated his genius and applied his creative powers in a way more appropriate to America, would have become a money-making author; but he was undisciplined, worked only when he liked, and on what subjects he pleased. His roving disposition made him roll like a comet out of its orbit from Baltimore to New York, from New York to Philadelphia, from Philadelphia to Boston or Richmond, without being able to settle anywhere. In his moments of ennui, distress, or breakdown, when to excessive excitement, caused by some feverish work, succeeded that despondency known to authors, he drank brandy, a fault for which he has He was not under any delusion as to the effects of this disastrous vice, he who has written in the "Black Cat" this prophetic phrase: "What illness is comparable to alcohol!" He drank without drunkenness, just to forget, to find himself in a happy mood in regard to his work, or even to end an intolerable life in evading the scandal of a direct suicide. Briefly, one day, seized in the street by an attack of delirium tremens, he was carried to the hospital where he died, still young and with no signs of decaying power. The deplorable habit had had no influence on his intellect or his manners, which remained always those of an accomplished gentleman; nor on his beauty, which was remarkable to the end. We indicate but rapidly some traits of Edgar Poe, as we are not writing his life. The American author held so high a place in the intellectual esteem of Baudelaire that we must speak of him in a more or less developed way, and give, if not an account of his life, at least of his doctrines. Edgar Poe has certainly influenced Baudelaire, his translator, especially during the latter part of his life, which was, alas! so short. "The Extraordinary Histories," "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym," "The Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque," "Eureka," have been Great excitement was created by these histories, so mathematically fantastic, deduced in algebraical formulÆ, and in which the expositions resemble some judiciary led by the most subtle and perspicacious magistrates. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Purloined Letter," "The Gold-Bug," enigmas more difficult to divine than those of the Sphinx, and in which the interest, sustained to the very end, excites to delirium the public, surfeited with romances and adventures. One feels deeply for Auguste Dupin, with his strange, divinatory lucidity, who seems to hold between his hands the threads, drawing one to the other, of thoughts most opposed, and who arrives at his conclusions "The Truth of the Case of M. Waldemar," shakes the nerves even of the most robust, and the "Fall of the House of Usher" inspires profound melancholy. Imaginative natures were deeply touched by the faces of women, so vaporous, transparent, romantically pale, and of almost spiritual beauty, Henceforth, in France, the name of Baudelaire is inseparable from that of Edgar Poe, and the memory of the one immediately awakes thoughts of the other. It seems sometimes that the ideas of the American were really of French origin. Baudelaire, like the greater number of the poets of his time, when the Arts, less separated than they were formerly, mingled more one with another and allowed of frequent transposition, had the taste for, sentiment and knowledge of, painting. He wrote noteworthy articles in the "Salon," and, amongst others, pamphlets on Delacroix, which analysed with clear penetration and subtlety the nature of a great romantic painter. He thought deeply, and we find, in some reflections on Edgar Poe, this significant phrase: "Like our Delacroix, who has raised his art to the height of great poetry, Edgar Poe likes to place his subjects on violet and green backgrounds which reveal the phosphorescence and the fragrance of the storm." How just is this sentiment, so simply phrased, incidental to the passionate and feverish colour of the painter! Delacroix, in effect, charmed Baudelaire by the At one time, the realistic school believed it could monopolise Baudelaire. Certain outrageously crude and truthful pictures in the "Flowers of Evil," pictures in which the poet had not hesitated before any ugliness, might have made some superficial minds think he leaned towards that doctrine. They did not note that these pictures, so-called real, were always ennobled by character, effect, or colour, and also served as a contrast to the smooth and idealistic work. Baudelaire, allowing himself to be drawn by these realists, visited their studios and was to have written an article on Courbet, the painting-master of Ornans, which, however, never appeared. Nevertheless, to one of the later Salons, Fantin, in the odd frame where he united round the medallion of EugÈne Delacroix, like the supernumeraries of an apotheosis, the painters, and writers known as realists, placed Baudelaire in a corner of it with his serious look and ironical smile. Certainly Baudelaire, as an admirer of Delacroix, had a right to be there. But did he intellectually and sympathetically make a part of this company, whose tendencies were not in accord with his aristocratic tastes and aspirations towards the beautiful? In him, as we have Far from being satisfied with reality, he sought diligently for the bizarre, and, if he met with some singular, original type, he followed it, studied it, and learnt how to find the end of the thread on the bobbin and so to unravel it. Thus he was familiar with Guys, a mysterious individual, who occupied his time in going to all the odd corners of the universe where anything was taking place to obtain sketches for English illustrated journals. This Guys, whom we knew, was at one time a great traveller, a profound and quick observer, and a perfect humorist. In the flash of an eye he seized upon the characteristic side of men and things; in a few strokes of the pencil he Guys was not what is properly called an artist, but he had the particular gift of sketching the chief points of things rapidly. In a flash of the eye, with an unequalled clear-sightedness, he disentangled from all the traits—just the one. He placed it in prominence, instinctively or designedly, rejecting the merely complementary parts. No one was more reproachful than he of a pose, a "cassure," to use a vulgar word which exactly expresses our thought, whether in a dandy or in a voyou, in a great lady or in a daughter of the people. He possessed in a rare degree the sense of modern corruptions, in high as in low society, and he also culled, under the form of sketches, his flowers of evil. No one could render like Guys the elegant slenderness and sleekness of the race-horse, the dainty border on the skirt of a little lady drawn by her ponies, the pose of the powdered and befurred coachman on the box of a great chariot, with panels emblazoned with the coat of arms, going to a "drawing-room" accompanied by three footmen. He seems, in this style of drawing, fashionable and cursive, consecrated to the scenes of high life, to have been the precursor of the intelligent artists of "La Vie Parisienne," Marcelin, Hadol, Morin, Crafty. But, if Guys Certainly he realised all that was lacking in these rough sketches, to which Guys himself attached not the slightest importance once they had been traced on wood by the clever engravers of the "Illustrated London News." But Baudelaire was struck by the spirit, the clear-sightedness, This so original comprehension of modern beauty turns the question, for it regards antique beauty as primitive, coarse, barbarous; a paradoxical opinion undoubtedly, but one which can be upheld. Balzac much preferred, to the Venus of Milo, a Parisienne ÉlÉgante, delicate, coquettish, draped in cashmere, going furtively on foot to some With such ideas as these one can imagine that for some time Baudelaire was inclined towards the realistic school of which Courbet is the god and Manet the high-priest. But if certain sides of his nature were such as could be satisfied by direct, and not traditional, representation of ugliness, or at least of contemporary triviality, his aspirations for Art, elegance, luxury, and beauty led him towards a superior sphere. And Delacroix, with his febrile passion, his stormy colours, his poetical melancholy, his palette of the setting sun, and his clever expression of the decadence, was, and remained, his master by election. We come now to a singular work of Baudelaire's, half translation, half original, entitled, "The artificial Paradises, Opium and Hashish," and at which we must pause; for it has contributed not a little to the idea among the public, who are always happy in spreading unfavourable reports of authors, that the writer of the "Flowers of Evil" was in the habit of seeking inspiration in these stimulants. His death, following upon a His illness was caused by nothing but the fatigue, ennui, sorrow, and embarrassments inherent in literary people whose talent does not admit of regular work, easy to sell, like journalism, and whose works, by their originality, frighten the timid directors of reviews. Baudelaire was as sober as all other workers, and, while admitting a taste for the creation of an "artificial paradise," by means of some stimulant, opium, hashish, wine, alcohol, or tobacco, seems to follow the nature of man—since one finds it in all periods, in all conditions, in all countries, barbarous or civilised—he saw in it the proof of original perversity, a means of escaping necessary sorrow, a satanical suggestion for usurping, even in the present, the happiness reserved as a recompense for resignation, virtue, and the persistent effort towards the good and the beautiful. He thought that the devil said to the eaters of hashish, the smokers of opium, as in the olden times to our first parents, "If you taste of the fruit you will be as the gods," and that he no more Balzac came to one of these soirÉes, and Baudelaire related his visit thus: "Balzac undoubtedly thought that there is no greater shame or keener We were at the HÔtel Pimodan that evening, and therefore can relate this little anecdote with perfect accuracy. Only, we would add this characteristic detail: in giving back the spoonful of hashish that was offered him, Balzac only said that the attempt would be useless, and that hashish, he was sure, would have no action on his brain. That was possible. This powerful brain, in which will power was enthroned and fortified by study, saturated with the subtle aroma of moka, and never obscured by even a few bottles of the lightest of wine of Vouvray, would perhaps have been capable of resisting the passing intoxication of Indian hemp. The analysis of hashish is medically very well done in the "Artificial Paradises," and science is able to cull from them certain information; for Baudelaire prided himself on his accuracy, and on no consideration whatever would he slur over the least technical ornamentation of this habit in which he had himself indulged. He specifies perfectly the real character of the hallucinations produced by hashish, which of itself creates nothing, simply developing the particular disposition of the individual, exaggerating it to the very last degree. What one sees is oneself, aggrandised, made sensitive, excited, immoderately outside time and space, at one time real but soon deformed, accentuated, enlarged, and in which each detail, with extreme intensity, becomes of supernatural importance. Yet all this is easily understandable to the hashish-eater, who divines the mysterious correspondence between the often incongruous images. If you hear a piece of music which seems as though performed by some celestial orchestra and a choir of seraphim, compared to which the symphonies of Haydn, of Mozart, and of Beethoven are no more than aggravating clatter, you may believe that it is only that a hand has skimmed over the keys of As to the walls, ceasing to be opaque, sinking away into vaporous perspective, deep, blue, like a window opening on the infinite, it is but a glass mirror opposite the dreamer with its mingled and transparently fantastic shadows. The nymphs, the goddesses, the gracious apparitions, burlesque or terrible, come out of the pictures, the tapestries, from the statues displaying their mythological nudity in the niches, or from the grimacing china figures on the shelves. It is the same with the olfactory ecstasies which transport one to the paradises of perfumes, of marvellous flowers, balancing their calices like censors which send out aromatic scents of penetrating subtlety, recalling the memory of former lives, of balsamic and distant shores and primitive loves in some Tahiti of a dream. One does not have to seek far in the room for a pot of heliotrope or tuberose, a sachet of Spanish leather or a cashmere shawl impregnated with patchouli, negligently thrown over the arm of a chair. It is understood, then, if one wishes to enjoy to the full the magic of hashish, it is necessary to Without these precautions the ecstasy is likely Baudelaire relates two or three hallucinations of men of different temperaments, and one experienced by a woman in a small room hidden by a gilt trellis and festooned with flowers, which is easily recognised as the boudoir of the HÔtel Pimodan. He accompanies each vision with an analytical and moral commentary, through which his unconquerable repugnance for happiness obtained by such means is easily discernible. He counts as nothing the consideration of the help that genius can draw from the ideas suggested by intoxication of hashish. Firstly, these ideas are not so beautiful as one imagines, their charm comes chiefly from the extreme excitement in which the subject is. Then hashish, which produces these ideas, destroys at the same time the power of using them, for it reduces to nothing the will and plunges its victims in an ennui in which the mind becomes And, a little later, he makes his profession of faith in these noble terms: "But man is not so lacking in honest means of inspiration that he is obliged to invite the aid of the pharmacy or of sorcery; he has no need to sell his soul to pay for the intoxicating caresses and friendliness of the houris. What is the paradise that one buys at the price of eternal salvation?" There follows the painting of a sort of Olympus placed on the arduous mount of spirituality where the muses of Raphael or of Mantegna, under the guidance of Apollo, surround with their rhythmical choirs the artist vowed to the cult of beauty and recompense him for his continuous efforts. "Beneath him," continues the author, "at the foot of the mountain, in the brambles and mud, the troop of men, the band of helots, After such an expression of faith it is difficult to believe that the author of the "Flowers of Evil," in spite of his satanical leanings, has often visited artificial paradises. Succeeding the study on hashish is one on the subject of opium. But here Baudelaire had for his guidance a book, singularly celebrated in England, "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," by De Quincey, a distinguished Hellenist, a leading writer, and a man of great respectability, who has dared, with tragical candour, in a country the most hardened by cant in the world, to avow his passion for opium, to describe this passion, representing "O just, subtle, and all-conquering opium! thou Baudelaire does not translate De Quincey's book entirely. He takes from it the most salient parts, of which he writes in an analysis intermingled with digressions and philosophical reflections, in such a way that he presents the entire work in an To the most striking visions which shone with the blue and silver of Paradise or Elysium succeeded others more sombre than Erebus, to which one can apply the frightful lines of the poet: "As when some great painter dips De Quincey, who was a precocious and distinguished humanist—he knew both Greek and Latin at the age of ten—had always taken great pleasure At other times, people seen in reality would be mixed up in his dreams, and would haunt them like obstinate spectres not to be chased away by any formula of exorcism. One day, in the year 1813, a Malay, of a yellow and bilious colour, with sad, home-sick eyes, coming from London and seeking some haven, knowing not one word of any European language, knocked to see if he could rest a while, at the door of the cottage. Not wishing to fall short in the eyes of his domestics and neighbours, De Quincey spoke to him in Greek; the Asiatic replied in Malay, and his honour as a linguist was saved. After having With malicious irony, the Malay, who seemed to understand the repugnance of the opium-eater, took care to lead him to the centre of great towns, to the ivory towers, to rivers full of junks crossed by bridges in the form of dragons, to streets encumbered with an innumerable population of baboons, lifting their heads with obliquely set eyes, and moving their tails like rats, murmuring, with forced reverence, complimentary mono-syllables. The third and last part of the dreams of an opium-eater has a lamentable title, which, however, is well justified, "Suspiria de profundis." In one of these visions appeared three unforgettable figures, mysteriously terrible like the Grecian "Moires" and the "Mothers" of the second "Faust." These are the followers of Levana, the austere goddess who takes up the new-born babe and perfects it by sorrow. As there were three Graces, three Fates, three Furies, three Muses in the primitive ages, so there were three goddesses of sorrow; they are our Notre-Dame des Tristesses. The eldest of the three One can imagine that Baudelaire did not spare De Quincey the reproaches he addressed to all those who sought to attain the supernatural by material means; but, in regard to the beauty of the pictures painted by the illustrious and poetical dreamer, he showed him great good will and admiration. About this time Baudelaire left Paris and pitched his tent in Brussels. One must not presume that this journey was taken with any political idea, but merely from the desire of a more tranquil and reposeful life, far away from the distractions The rumour of Baudelaire's death spread in Paris with the winged rapidity of bad news, faster than an electric current along its wire. Baudelaire was still living, but the news, though false, was only premature; he could not recover from the attack. Brought back from Brussels by his family and friends, he lived some months, unable to speak, unable to write, as paralysis had broken the connecting thread between thought and speech. Thought lived in him always—one could see that from the expression of his eyes; but it was a prisoner, and dumb, without any means of communication, in the dungeon of clay which would only open in the tomb. What good is it to go Besides the "Flowers of Evil," translations of Edgar Poe, the "Artificial Paradises," and art criticisms, Baudelaire left a little book of "poems in prose" inserted at various periods in journals and reviews, which soon became without interest for vulgar readers and forced the poet, in his noble obstinacy, which would allow of no concession, to take the series to a more enterprising or literary paper. This is the first time that these pieces, scattered and difficult to find, are bound in one volume, nor will they be the least of the poet's titles to the regard of posterity. In the short Preface addressed to ArsÈne Houssaye, which precedes the "Petits poÈmes en prose," Baudelaire relates how the idea of employing this hybrid form, floating between verse and prose, came to him. "I have a little confession to make to you. It was in turning over, for the twentieth time, the famous 'Gaspard de la nuit' of Aloysius Bertrand (a book known to me, to you, and several of our friends—has it not the right to be called famous?) that the idea came to me to attempt something analogous and to apply to the description of modern "Who among us, in these days of ambition, has not dreamt of the miracle of poetical, musical prose, without rhythm, without rhyme, supple enough and apt enough to adapt itself to the movements of the soul, to the swaying of a dream, to the sudden throbs of conscience?" It is unnecessary to say that nothing resembles "Gaspard de la nuit" less than the "Poems in Prose." Baudelaire himself saw this after he commenced work, and he spoke of an accident, of which any other than he would have been proud, but which only humiliated a mind which looked upon the accomplishment of exactly what it had intended as an honour. We have seen that Baudelaire always claimed to direct his inspiration according to his own will, and to introduce infallible mathematics into his art. He blamed himself for producing anything but that upon which he had resolved, even though it is, as in the present case, an original and powerful work. Our poetical language, it must be acknowledged, in spite of the valiant effort of the new school to render it flexible and malleable, hardly lends itself to rare and subtle detail, especially when the subject is la vie moderne, familiar or luxurious. Without It is very difficult, without writing at great length—and, even then, it is better to direct the reader straight to the poems themselves—to give a just idea of these compositions; pictures, medallions, bas-reliefs, statuettes, enamels, pastels, cameos which follow each other rather like the vertebrae in the spine of a serpent. One is able to pick out some of the rings, and the pieces join themselves together, always living, having each its own soul writhing convulsively towards an inaccessible ideal. Before closing this Introduction, which, although already too long—for we have simply chased through the work of the author and friend whose talent we endeavour to explain—it is necessary to quote the titles of the "Poems in Prose"—very superior in intensity, concentration, profoundness, and elegance to the delicate fantasies of "Gaspard de la nuit," which Baudelaire proposed to take as models. Among the fifty pieces which comprise the collection, each different in tone and composition, we will number "Le GÂteau, "La Chambre double," "Le Foules," "Les Veuves," "Le vieux saltimbanque," We know of no other analogy to this perfect piece than the poetry of Li-tai-pe, so well translated by Judith Walter, in which the Empress of China When we listen to the music of Weber we experience at first a sensation of magnetic sleep, a sort of appeasement which separates us without any shock from real life. Then in the distance sounds a strange note which makes us listen attentively. This note is like a sigh from the supernatural world, like the voice of the invisible spirits which call us. Oberon just puts his hunting-horn to his mouth and the magic forest opens, stretching out into blue vistas peopled with all the fantastic folk described by Shakespeare in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Titania herself appears in the transparent robe of silver gauze. The reading of the "Poems in Prose" has often produced in us these impressions; a phrase, a word—one only—bizarrely chosen and placed, evoke for us an unknown world of forgotten and yet friendly faces. They revive the memories of early life, and present a mysterious choir of vanished ideas, murmuring in undertones among the phantoms of things apart from the realities of life. Other phrases, of a morbid tenderness, seem like music whispering consolation for unavowed sorrows and irremediable despair. But it is necessary to beware, for such things as these make us THÉOPHILE GAUTIER. February 20th, 1868. L'AUTEUR DES FLEURS DU MAL SELECTED POEMS OF CHARLES BAUDELAIREDONE INTO ENGLISH VERSEBY GUY THORNEEXOTIC PERFUME Note.—It seems fairly obvious—and perhaps this is a discovery —that Baudelaire must have read Gray's "Elegy." As we know, he was a first-class English scholar, and whether he plagiarised or unconsciously remembered the most perfect stanza that Gray ever wrote, one can hardly doubt that the gracious music of the French was borrowed from or influenced by the no less splendid rhythm of— "Full many a gem of purest ray serene LINES WRITTEN ON THE FLY-LEAF OF AN EXECRATED BOOK LITTLE POEMS IN PROSEVENUS AND THE FOOLHow glorious the day! The great park swoons beneath the Sun's burning eye, as youth beneath the Lordship of Love. Earth's ecstasy is all around, the waters are drifting into sleep. Silence reigns in nature's revel, as sound does in human joy. The waning light casts a glamour over the world. The sun-kissed flowers plume the day with colour, and fling incense to the winds. They desire to rival the painted sky. Yet, amidst the rout, I see one sore afflicted thing. A motley fool, a willing clown who brings laughter to the lips of kings when weariness and remorse oppress them; a fool in a gaudy dress, coiffed in cap and bells, huddles at the foot of a huge Venus. His eyes are full of tears, and raised to the goddess they seem to say: "I am the last and most alone of mortals, inferior to the meanest animal, in that I am denied either love or friendship. Yet I, even I, am made for human sympathy and the adoration of immortal Beauty. O Goddess, have pity, have mercy on my sadness and despair." But the implacable Venus stares through the world with her steady marble eyes. THE DESIRE TO PAINTUnhappy is the man, but happy the artist, to whom this desire comes. I long to paint one woman. She has come to me but seldom, swiftly passing from my sight, as some beautiful, unforgettable object the traveller leaves behind him in the night. It is long ago since I saw her. She is lovely, far more than that; she is all-sufficing. She is a study in black: all that she inspires is nocturnal and profound. Her eyes are two deep pools wherein mystery vaguely coils and stirs; her glance is phosphorescent; it is like lightning on a summer night of black velvet. She is comparable to a great black Sun, if one could imagine a dark star brimming over with happiness and light. She stirs within one dreams of the moon, Night's Queen who casts spells upon her—not the white moon, that cold bride of summer idylls, but the sinister, intoxicating moon which hangs in the leaden vault of storm, among the driven clouds; not the pale, peaceful moon who visits the sleep of the pure; but the fiery moon, tom from the conquered heavens, before whom dance the witches of Thessaly. Upon the brow determination sits; she is ever seeking whom she may enthrall. Her delicately curved and quivering nostrils breathe incense from unknown lands; a haunting smile lingers on her subtle lips—lips softer than sleep-laden poppy petals, kissed by the suns of tropic lands. There are women who inspire one with the desire to woo and win. She makes me long to fall asleep at her feet, beneath her slow and steady gaze. EACH MAN HIS OWN CHIMÆRABeneath a vault of livid sky, upon a far-flung and dusty plain where no grass grew, where not a nettle or a thistle dared raise its head, men passed me bowed down to the ground. Each bore upon his back a great ChimÆra, heavy as a sack of coal, or as the equipment of a foot-soldier of Rome. But the monster was no dead weight. With her all-powerful and elastic muscles she encircled and oppressed her mount, clawing with two great talons at his breast. Her fabulous head reposed upon his brow, like a casque of ancient days whereby warriors struck fear to the hearts of their foes. I questioned one of the wayfarers, asking why they walked thus. He replied that he knew nothing, neither he nor his companions, but that None of the wayfarers was discomforted by the foul thing which hung upon his neck. One said that it was part of himself. Beneath the lowering dome of sky they journeyed on. They trod the dust-strewn earth—earth as desolate as the dusty sky. Their weary faces bore no witness to despair; they were condemned to hope for ever. So the pilgrimage passed and faded into the mist of the horizon, where the planet unveils itself to the human eye. For some moments I tried to solve this mystery; but unconquerable Indifference fell upon me. And I was no more dejected by my burden than they by their crushing ChimÆras. INTOXICATIONTo be drunken for ever: that is the only thing which matters! If you would escape Time's bruises and his heavy burdens which weigh you to the earth, you must be drunken. But how? With the fruit of the wine, with poetry, with virtue, with what you will. But be drunken. And if, sometime, at the gates of a palace, on the green banks of a river, or in the shadowed loneliness of your own room, you should awake and find intoxication lessened or passed THE MARKSMANAs the carriage passed through the wood he told the driver to halt at a shooting-gallery, saying that he wished to have a few shots to kill time. Is not the slaying of the monster Time the most usual and legitimate occupation of man? So he graciously offered his hand to his dear, adorable, accursed wife; the mysterious woman who was his inspiration, to whom he owed many of his sorrows, many of his joys. Several bullets went wide of the mark; one flew far away into the distance. His charming wife laughed deliriously, mocking at his clumsiness. Turning to her, he said brusquely: "Look at that doll yonder, on your right, with its nose turned up and so supercilious an air. Think, sweet angel, I will picture to myself that it is you." He closed his eyes, he pulled the trigger. The doll's head fell upon the ground. Then, bending over his dear, adorable, accursed wife, his inevitable and merciless muse, he kissed her hand respectfully, and said: "Ah, sweet Angel, how I thank you for my skill!" CORRESPONDENCE OF BAUDELAIREBaudelaire to Sainte-Beuve19th March, 1856. Here, my dear patron, is a kind of literature which will not, perhaps, inspire you with as much enthusiasm as it does me, but which will most surely interest you. It is necessary—that is to say that I desire, that Edgar Poe, who is not very great in America, should become a great man in France. Knowing how brave you are and what a lover of novelty, I have boldly promised your support to Michel LÉvy. Can you write me a line telling me if you will do something in the "AthenÆum" or elsewhere? Because, in that case, I would write to M. Lalanne not to entrust this to any one else—your pen having a peculiar authority of which I am in need. You will see at the end of the Notice (which contradicts all the current opinions in the United States) that I announce new studies. I shall speak of the opinions of this singular man later, in the matter of sciences, philosophy, and literature. I deliver my always troubled soul into your hands. Baudelaire to Sainte-BeuveWednesday, 26th March, 1856. You well knew that this scrap of good news would enchant me. Lalanne had been warned by I can, with respect to the remainder of your letter, give you some details which will perhaps interest you. There will be a second volume and a second preface. The first volume is written to draw the Public: "Juggling, hypotheses, false rumours," etc. "Ligeia" is the only important piece which is morally connected with the second volume. The second volume is more markedly fantastic: "Hallucinations, mental maladies, pure grotesqueness, the supernatural," etc. The second Preface will contain the analysis of the words that I shall not translate, and, above all, the statement of the scientific and literary opinions of the author. It is even necessary that I should write to M. de Humboldt on this subject to ask him his opinion on a little book which is dedicated to him; it is "Eureka." The first preface, that you have seen and in which I have tried to comprise a lively protestation against Americanism, is almost complete from the biographical point of view. We shall pretend to wish to consider Poe only as a juggler, but I shall come back at the finish to the supernatural character of his poetry and his stories. He is only American in Now, the piece to which you allude makes part of the second volume. It is a dialogue between two souls, after the destruction of the earth. There are three dialogues of this kind that I shall be happy to lend you at the end of the month, before delivering my second volume to the printer. Now, I thank you with all my heart; but you are so kind that you run risks with me. After the Poe will come two volumes of mine, one of critical articles and the other of poems. Thus, I make my excuses to you beforehand; and, besides, I fear that when I shall no longer speak with the voice of a great poet, I shall be for you a brawling and disagreeable being. Yours ever. At the end of the second volume of Poe I shall put some specimens of poetry. I am persuaded that a man so careful as yourself would not wish me to ask him to take note of the orthography of the name [Edgar Poe]. No "d," no diÆresis, no accent. Baudelaire to Sainte-Beuve9th March, 1857. My dear friend, you are too indulgent to have taken exception to the impertinent point of This second volume is of a higher and more poetic nature than two-thirds of the first. The third volume (in process of publication in the "Moniteur") will be preceded by a third notice. The tale of the end of the world is called "Conversation of Eiros with Charmion." A new pull has just been made of the first volume, in which the principal faults are corrected. Michel knows that he must keep a copy for you. If I have not the time to bring it to you, I shall have it sent to you. Your affectionate. Baudelaire to Sainte-BeuveWednesday, 18th August, 1857. Ah! dear friend, I have something very serious, something very awkward to ask you. I wished to write to you, and then I would rather tell you. For a fortnight my ideas on this subject have been changing; but my lawyer (Chaix d'Est-Ange fils) insists that I talk to you about it, and I should be very happy if you could grant me a little conversation of three minutes to-day wherever you like, at This morning I am awaiting some copies of my brochure; I will send you one at the same time. Your very affectionate. Baudelaire to Sainte-BeuveTuesday, 18th May, 1858. I think that I drop in upon you as inconveniently as possible, do I not? You are engaged to-day; but, by coming to see you after four o'clock I shall perhaps be able to find you. In any case, whether I deceive myself or not, if you are busy this evening with your affairs, put me to the door like a true friend. Yours always. Baudelaire to Sainte-Beuve 14th June, 1858. DEAR FRIEND, I have just read your work on "Fanny." Is there any need for me to tell you how charming it is and how surprising it is to see a mind at once so full of health, of herculean health, and at the same time most delicate, most subtle, most femininely fine! (On the subject of feminine With you, it is necessary to be cynical; for you are too shrewd for deceit not to be dangerous. Ah well, this article has inspired me with terrible jealousy. So much has been said about LoËve-Weimars and of the service he has rendered to French literature! Shall I not find a champion who will say as much of me? By some cajolery, most powerful friend, shall I obtain this from you? However, what I ask of you is not an injustice. Did you not offer it to me at first? Are not the "Adventures of Pym" an excellent pretext for a general sketch? You, who love to amuse yourself in all depths, will you not make an excursion into the depths of Edgar Poe? You guess that the request for this service is connected in my mind with the visit I must pay to M. Pelletier. When one has a little money and goes to dine with a former mistress one forgets everything. But there are days when the curses of all the fools mount to one's brain, and then one implores one's old friend, Sainte-Beuve. Now, truly, of late I have been literally dragged in the mud, and (pity me, it is the first time that I know how busy you are and how full of application for all your lessons, for all your work and duties, etc. But if, sometimes, a little strain were not put on friendliness, on kindness, where would the hero of friendliness be? And if one did not say too much good about brave men, how would they be consoled for the curses of those who only wish to say too much evil? Finally, I will say to you, as usual, that all that you wish will be good. Yours ever. I like you more than I like your books. Baudelaire to Sainte-Beuve14th August, 1858. Is it permitted to come and warm and fortify oneself a little by contact with you? You know what I think of men who are depressants and men who have a tonic influence. If, then, I unsettle you, you must blame your qualification, still more my weakness. I have need of you as of a douche. Baudelaire to Sainte-Beuve21st February, 1859. My dear friend, I do not know if you take in the "Revue franÇaise." But, for fear that you should read it, I protest against a certain line (on the Once, in a newspaper, I have been accused of ingratitude towards two chiefs of ancient romanticism to whom I owe all; it spoke, besides, with a judicial air, of this infamous trash. This time, in reading this unfortunate line, I said to myself: "Mon Dieu! Sainte-Beuve, who knows my fidelity, but who knows that I am connected with the author, will perhaps believe that I have been capable of prompting this passage." It is exactly the contrary; I have quarrelled with Babou many a time in order to persuade him that you would always do everything you ought and could do. A short time ago I was talking to Malassis of this great friendship, which does me honour and to which I owe so much good advice. The monster left me no peace until I gave him the long letter that you sent me at the time of my lawsuit, and which will serve, perhaps, as a plan for the making of a Preface. New "Flowers" are done, and passably out of the ordinary. Here, in repose, fluency has come back to me. There is one of them ("Danse macabre") which ought to have appeared on the 15th, in the "Revue contemporaine...." I have not forgotten your Coleridge, but I have been a month without receiving any books, and to Sincerely yours, and write to me if you have time. Honfleur, Calvados (this address is sufficient). What has become of the old rascal? (d'Aurevilly). Baudelaire to Sainte-Beuve28th February, 1859. My dear friend, I learn that you have asked Malassis to communicate to you what you wrote to me on the subject of the "Flowers." Malassis is a little astounded; furthermore, he is ill. There were two letters; one, a friendly, complimentary letter; the other, a scheme of the address that you gave to me on the eve of my lawsuit. As, one day, I was classifying papers with Malassis, he begged me to give him that, and when I told him I intended to make use of it (not by copying but by paraphrasing and developing it) he said to me: "All the more reason. You will always find it again at my house. If your printer had it, it could not get lost." I even think I remember having said to Malassis: "If I had pleaded my cause myself and if I had known how to develop this thesis, that a lawyer could not understand, I should doubtless have been acquitted." I understand absolutely nothing of this nonsense in the "Revue franÇaise." The manager, however, Malassis, on whom I had not counted at all, has also seen the passage, and his letter is still more severe than yours. I am going to Paris on the 4th or 5th. It would be very kind of you to write a word to Mme. Duval, 22, rue Beautreillis, to let me know if and when you wish to see me. I shall stay at her house. Yours sincerely. Baudelaire to Sainte-Beuve3rd or 4th March, 1859. A thousand thanks for your excellent letter. It has reassured me, but I think you are too sensitive. If ever I attain as good a position as yours, I shall be a man of stone. I have just read a very funny article of the "rascal" on Chateaubriand and M. de Marcellus, his critic. He has not missed the over easy witticism: "Tu Marcellus eris!" In replying to Babou (what was important to me was to assure myself that you did not believe me capable of a meanness) I think that you attribute too much importance to him. He gives me the Yours sincerely. Baudelaire to Sainte-Beuve1860. DEAR FRIEND, I am writing to you beforehand, for precaution, because I have so strong a presentiment that I shall not have the pleasure of finding you. I wrote recently to M. Dalloz a letter couched as nearly as possible like the following: "Render account of the 'Paradis artificiels'! I know Messrs. So-and-so, So-and-so, etc., on the 'Moniteur.'" Reply of Dalloz: "The book is worthy of Sainte-Beuve. (It is not I speaking.) Pay a visit to M. Sainte-Beuve about it." I should not have dared to think so. Numerous reasons, of which I guess part, perhaps estrange you from it, and perhaps also the book does not please you. However, I have more than ever need of being upheld, and I ought to have given you an account of my perplexity. All that has been said about this essay has not any common sense, absolutely none. P.S.—A few days ago, but then for the pure need of seeing you, as AntÆus had need of the Earth, I went to the rue Montparnasse. On the way I passed a gingerbread shop, and the fixed idea took hold of me that you must like gingerbread. Note that nothing is better in wine at dessert; and I felt that I was going to drop in on you at dinner-time. I sincerely hope that you will not have taken the piece of gingerbread, encrusted with angelica, for an idle joke, and that you will have eaten it in all simplicity. If you share my taste, I recommend you, when you can get it, English gingerbread, very thick, very black, so close that it has neither holes nor pores, full of ginger and aniseed. It is cut in slices as thin as roast beef, and can be spread with butter or preserve. Yours always. Love me well.... I am passing through a great crisis. Baudelaire to Sainte-BeuveEnd of January, 1862. Still another service that I owe you! When will this end? And how shall I thank you? The article had escaped me. That explains to you the delay before beginning to write to you. A few words, my dear friend, to paint for you the peculiar kind of pleasure that you have obtained for me. Many years ago I was very much wounded Now, my friend, you have put all that right, and I am very grateful to you for it—I, who have always said that it was not sufficient to be wise, but that above all it was necessary to be agreeable. As for what you call my Kamtschatka, if I often received encouragements as vigorous as that, I believe that I should have the strength to make an immense Siberia of it, but a warm and populous one. When I see your activity, your vitality, I am quite ashamed; happily, I have sudden leaps and crises in my character which replace, though very inadequately, the action of sustained willingness. Must I, the incorrigible lover of the "Rayons jaunes" and of "VoluptÉ," of Sainte-Beuve the poet and novelist, now compliment the journalist? How do you arrive at this certainty of pen which allows you to say everything and makes a game of every difficulty for you? This article is not a pamphlet, for it is a righteousness. One thing Really, I should have liked to collaborate in it a little—forgive this pride—I should have been able to give you two or three enormities that you have omitted through ignorance. I will tell you all this in a good gossip. Ah, and your Utopia! the great way of driving the "vague, so dear to great nobles," from elections! Your Utopia has given me a new pride. I, also, have done it, Utopia, reform;—is it an old revolutionary movement that drove me, also, long ago, to make schemes for a constitution? There is this great difference, that yours is quite viable and that perhaps the day is not far off when it will be adopted. Poulet-Malassis is burning to make a pamphlet of your admirable article.... I ask you to promise to find some minutes to reply to the following: Great trouble, the necessity of working, physical ills, have interfered with my proceedings. At last I have fifteen examples of my principal books. My very restricted distribution list is made. I think it is good policy to put up for the Lacordaire chair. There are no literary men there. It was first of all my own design, and, if I had not It is imperative that this terrible rhetorician, this so grave and unkindly man, should read my letter; this man who preaches while he talks, with the expression and the solemnity (but not with the good faith) of Mlle. Lenormand. I have seen this lady in the robe of a professor, set in her chair, like a Quasimodo, and she had over M. Villemain the advantage of a very sympathetic voice. If, by chance, M. Villemain is dear to you, I at once take back all that I have just said; and, for love of you, I shall do my best to find him lovable. However, I cannot help thinking that, as a papist, I am worth more than him ... even though I am a very-much-suspected Catholic. I want, in spite of my tonsure and my white hairs, to speak to you as a little boy. My mother, who is very much bored, is continually asking me for novelties. I have sent her your article. Your very devoted. Baudelaire to Sainte-BeuveMonday evening, 3rd February, 1862. My dear friend, I am trying hard to guess those hours which are your leisure hours, and I cannot succeed. I have not written a word, in accordance with your advice; but I am patiently continuing my visits, in order to let it be well understood that I want, with regard to the election in replacement of Father Lacordaire, to gather some votes from men of letters. I think that Jules Sandeau will speak to you about me; he has said to me very graciously: "You catch me too late, but I will go and find out if there is anything to be done for you." Twice I have seen Alfred de Vigny, who has kept me three hours each time. He is an admirable and delightful man, but not fitted for action, and even dissuading from action. However, he has shown me the warmest sympathy. You do not know that the month of January has been a month of fretfulness and neuralgia for me.... I say this in order to explain the interruption in my proceedings. I have seen Lamartine, Patin, Viennet, LegouvÉ, de Vigny, Villemain (horror!), Sandeau. Really, At last I have sent a few copies of some books to ten of those whose works I know. This week I shall see some of these gentlemen. I have written an analysis, such as it is, of your excellent article (without signing it; but my conduct is infamous, is it not?) in the "Revue anecdotique" As for the article itself, I have sent it to M. de Vigny, who did not know it, and who showed me that he wished to read it. As for the talkers of politics, among whom I shall not be able to find any pleasure, I shall go the round of them in a carriage. They shall have only my card and not my face. This evening I have read your "Pontmartin." Pardon me for saying to you, "What lost talent!" In your prodigality there is at times something which scandalises me. It seems to me that I, after having said, "The most noble causes are sometimes upheld by bumpkins," I should have considered my work finished. But you have particular talents for suggestion and divination. Even towards the most culpable beasts you are delightfully polished. This Monsieur Pontmartin is a great hater of literature.... I have sent you a little parcel of sonnets. I will next send you several packets of reveries in prose, I do not ask you if you are well. That is sufficiently apparent. I embrace you and shake you by the hands.—I leave your house. Baudelaire to Sainte-Beuve15th March, 1865. Dear friend, I take advantage of the "Histoires grotesques et sÉrieuses" to remind myself of you. Sometimes, in the mornings, I talk about you with M. Muller, of LiÈge, by whose side I take luncheon, —and in the evening, after dinner, I am re-reading "Joseph Delorme" with Malassis. Decidedly, you are right; "Joseph Delorme" is the old woman's "Flowers of Evil." The comparison is glorious for me. Have the goodness not to find it offensive to yourself. And the Preface of the "Vie de CÉsar?" Is it predestinarian enough? Yours always. BRUXELLES, RUE DE LA MONTAGNE, 28. Baudelaire to Sainte-BeuveThursday, 30th March, 1865. My dear friend, I thank you for your excellent letter; can you write any which are not excellent? Only, I observe that in your letter there is no allusion to the copy of "Histoires grotesques et sÉrieuses" that I asked Michel LÉvy to send you. I swear to you, besides, that I have no intention whatever of getting the least advertisement for this book out of you. My only aim was, knowing as you well know how to distribute your time, to provide you with an occasion for enjoying once more an amazing subtlety of logic and sensations. There are people who will find that the fifth volume is inferior to the preceding ones; but that is of no consequence to me. We are not as bored as you think, Malassis and I. We have learnt to go without everything, in a country where there is nothing, and we have understood that certain pleasures (those of On the subject of Malassis, I will tell you that I marvel at his courage, at his activity, and his incorrigible gaiety. He has arrived at a very surprising erudition in point of books and prints. Everything amuses him and everything teaches him. One of our chief amusements is when he pretends to play the atheist and when I try to play the Jesuit. You know that I can become religious by contradiction (above all here) so that, to make me impious, it would be sufficient to put me in contact with a slovenly curÉ (slovenly of body and soul). As for the publication of some humorous books which it has pleased him to amend with the same piety that he would have put at the service of Bossuet or Loyola, even I have drawn from them a little, little unexpected gain: it is a clearer understanding of the French Revolution. When people amuse themselves in a certain way, it is a good diagnosis of revolution. Alexander Dumas has just left us. This fine man has come to show himself with his ordinary candour. In flocking round him to get a shake of the hand, the Belgians made fun of him.... That is unworthy. A man can be worthy of respect for his vitality. Vitality of the negro, it is true. But I think that many others, besides myself, lovers of the serious, have been carried away by As I am very impatient to return to France, I have written to J. L. to commission him with my small affairs. I would like to collect, in three or four volumes, the best of my articles on the "Stimulants," the "Painters," and the "Poets," adding thereto a series of "Observations on Belgium." If, in one of your rare strolls, you go along the boulevard de Gand, stir up his good feeling a little and exaggerate what you think of me. I must own that three important fragments are lacking, one on Didactic Painting (CornÉlius, Kaulbach, Chenavard, Alfred RÉthel), another, "Biography of the Flowers of Evil," and then a last: "Chateaubriand and his Family." You know that my passion for this old dandy is incorrigible. To sum up, little work; ten days perhaps. I am rich in notes. Pardon me if I intrude in a delicate question; my excuse is my desire to see you content (supposing that certain things would content you) and to see every one do you justice. I hear many people saying, "What! Sainte-Beuve is not yet a senator?" Many years ago I said to E. Delacroix, to whom I could speak my mind, that many young men preferred to see him remaining in the state of an outcast and rebel. (I alluded to his stubbornness in presenting himself at the Institute.) He I have just read Émile Ollivier's long discourse. It is very extraordinary. He speaks, it seems, with the authority of a man who has a great secret in his pocket. Have you read Janin's abominable article against melancholy and mocking poets? And Viennet, quoted amongst the great poets of France! And a fortnight after, an article in favour of Cicero! Do they take Cicero for an Orleanist or an academician? M. de Sacy says: "Cicero is our CÆsar, ours!" Oh no, he is not, is he? Your very affectionate. Without any transition, I will tell you that I have just found an admirable melancholy ode by Shelley, composed on the shores of the Gulf of Naples, and which ends with these words: "I know that I am one of those whom men do not love; but I am one of those whom they remember." Very good! this is poetry! Baudelaire to Sainte-BeuveThursday 4th May, 1865. MY DEAR SAINTE-BEUVE,—As I take up a pen to write you some words of congratulation on your nomination, I find a letter that I wrote you on March 31st which has not yet gone, probably because of stupidity on my part or on the part of the hotel people. I have read it again. I find it boyish, childish. But I send it to you just the same. If it makes you laugh, I shall not say "So much the worse," but "So much the better." I am not at all afraid, knowing your indulgence, to strip myself before you. To the passage which treats of J. L. I shall add that I have finished the fragments in question (except the book on Belgium, which I have not the courage to finish here) and that, obliged to go to Honfleur to seek all the other pieces composing the books announced to L..., I shall doubtless go on to Paris on the 15th, in order to torment him a little. If, by chance, you see him, you can tell him. As for Malassis, his terrible affair happens on the 12th, He thinks he is sure to be condemned Alas! the "Poems in Prose" to which you have again sent a recent encouragement, are much delayed. I am always giving myself difficult work. To make a hundred laborious trifles which demand unfailing good-humour (good-humour necessary even to treat of sad subjects), a strange stimulant which needs sights, crowds, music, even street-lamps, that is what I wanted to do! I am only at sixty and I can go no further. I need this famous "bath of the multitude" of which the error has justly shocked you. M. has come here. I have read your article. I have admired your suppleness and your aptitude to enter into the soul of all the talents. But to this talent there is something lacking which I cannot define. M. has gone to Anvers, where there are magnificent things—above all, examples of this monstrous, Jesuitical style which pleases me so much, and which I hardly know except from the chapel of the college at Lyons, which is Decidedly, I congratulate you with all my heart. You are now the equal (officially) of many mediocre people. That matters little. You wished it, did you not? need, perhaps? You are content, then I am happy. Yours always. Baudelaire to Sainte-Beuve11th July, 1865. Very dear friend, I could not cross Paris without coming to shake you by the hand. Very soon, probably in a month. I saw J. L... three days ago, when I was making for Honfleur. L. pretended that he was going to undertake some important business for me with MM. G.... If you could intervene in my favour with one or two authoritative words, you would make me happy. You do not wish my Your very devoted friend. I start again for the infernal regions to-morrow evening. Till then, I am at the HÔtel du chemin de fer du Nord. Place de Nord. BRUXELLES, Tuesday, 2nd January, 1866. MY GOOD FRIEND, I have just seen that, for the first time in your life, you have delivered your physical person to the public. I allude to a portrait of you published by "L'Illustration." It really is very like you! The familiar, mocking, and rather concentrated expression, and the little calotte itself is not hidden. Shall I tell you I am so bored that this simple image has done me good? The phrase has an impertinent air. It means simply that, in the loneliness in which some old Paris friends have left me (J. L. in particular), your image has been enough to divert me from my weariness. What would I not give to go, in five minutes, to the rue Mont-Parnasse, to talk with you for an hour on your articles on Proudhon; with you who know how to listen even to men younger than yourself! Believe me, it is not that I find the reaction in his favour illegitimate. I have read him a good Of your work I say nothing to you. More than ever you have the air of a confessor and accoucheur of souls. They said the same thing of Socrates, I think; but Messrs. Baillarger and LÉlut have declared, on their conscience, that he was mad. This is the commencement of a year that will doubtless be as boring, as stupid, as criminal as all the preceding ones. What good can I wish you? You are virtuous and lovable, and (extraordinary thing!) they are beginning to do you justice!... I chatter far too much, like a nervous man who is tired. Do not reply to me if you have not five minutes of leisure. Your very affectionate. Baudelaire to Sainte-Beuve15th January, 1866. My dear friend, I do not know how to thank you enough for your good letters. It is really all the kinder of you because I know you are very busy. If I am sometimes long in replying it is on the score of health, which prevents me and even sends me to bed for many days. I shall follow your advice: I shall go to Paris and I shall see the G...s myself. Then, perhaps, I shall commit the indiscretion of asking you to give me a helping hand. But when? For six weeks I have been immersed in a chemist's shop. If it should be necessary to give up beer, I do not ask anything better. Tea and coffee, that is more serious; but will pass. Wine? the devil! it is cruel. But here is a still harder creature who says I must neither read nor study. What a strange medicine is that which prohibits the principal function! Another tells me for all consolation that I am hysterical. Do you admire, like me, the elastic usage of these fine words, well chosen to cloak our ignorance of everything? I have tried to plunge again into the "Spleen de Paris" ["Poems in Prose"], for that was not finished. Finally, I hope to be able to show, one of these days, a new Joseph Delorme, grappling with his rhapsodic thought at each incident in his stroll and drawing from each object a disagreeable moral. But how difficult it is to make nonsense when one wishes to express it in a manner at the same time impressive and light! Joseph Delorme has arrived there quite naturally. I have taken up the reading of your poems again ab ovo. I saw with pleasure that at each turn of the page I recognised verses which are old friends. It appears that, when I was a boy, I had Since you own that it does not displease you to hear your works spoken of, I am much tempted to write you thirty pages of confidences on this subject; but I think I should do better to write them first in good French for myself, and then to send them to a paper, if there still exists a journal in which one can talk poetry. However, here are some suggestions of the book which came to me by chance. I have understood, much better than heretofore, the "Consolations" and the "PensÉes d'aoÛt." I have noted as more brilliant the following pieces: "Sonnet À Mad. G...," page 225. Then you knew Mme. Grimblot, that tall and elegant Russian for whom the word "dÉsinvolture" was made and who had the hoarse, or rather the deep and sympathetic voice of some Parisian comediennes? I have often had the pleasure of hearing Mme. de Mirbel lecture her and it was very comical. (After all, perhaps I am deceiving myself; perhaps it is another Mme. G.... These collections of poetry are not only of poetry and Page 235, I was a little shocked to see you desiring the approbation of MM. Thiers, Berryer, Thierry, Villemain. Do these gentlemen really feel the thunderclap or the enchantment of an object of art? And are you then very much afraid of not being appreciated to have accumulated so many justificatory documents? To admire you, do I need the permission of M. de BÉranger? Good Heavens! I nearly forgot the "Joueur d'orgue," page 242. I have grasped much better than formerly the object and the art of narratives such as "Doudun," "MarÈze," "Ramon," "M. Jean," etc. The word "analytical energy" applies to you much more than to AndrÉ ChÉnier. There is still one piece that I find marvellous: it is the account of a watch-night, by the side of an unknown corpse, addressed to Victor Hugo at the time of the birth of one of his sons. What I call the decoration (landscape or furniture) is always perfect. In certain places of "Joseph Delorme" I find a little too much of lutes, lyres, harps, and Jehovahs. This is a blemish in the Parisian poems. Besides, you have come to destroy all that. Indeed, pardon me! I ramble on! I should never have dared to talk to you so long about it. I have found the pieces that I know by heart again. (Why should one reread, with pleasure, in printed characters, that which memory could recite?) "Dans l'Île de Saint-Louis" (Consolations). "Le Creux de la VallÉe," p. 113. Here is much of Delorme! And "Rose" (Charming), p. 127. "Stances de Kirke White" p. 139. "La Plaine" (beautiful October landscape), p. 138. Heavens! I must stop. I seem to pay you compliments, and I have no right. It is impertinent. Baudelaire to FlaubertTuesday, 25th August, 1857. Dear friend, I wrote you a hasty little note before five o'clock solely to prove to you my repentance at not having replied to your affectionate sentiments. But if you knew in what an abyss of puerile occupations I have been plunged! And the article on "Madame Bovary" is again deferred for some days! What an interruption in life is a ridiculous adventure! The comedy is played on Thursday; it has lasted a long time. Finally, three hundred francs fine, two hundred francs for the editors, suppression of numbers 20, 30, 39, 80, 81 and 87. I will write to you at length to-night. Yours always, as you know. Baudelaire to Flaubert26th June, 1860. MY DEAR FLAUBERT, I thank you very much for your excellent letter. I was struck by your observation, and, having fallen very severely in the memory of my dreams, I perceived that, all the time, I was beset by the impossibility of rendering an account of certain actions or sudden thoughts of man, without the hypothesis of the intervention of an evil force outside himself. Here is a great confession for which the whole confederated nineteenth century shall not make me blush. Mark well that I do not renounce the pleasure of changing my opinion or of contradicting myself. One of these days, if you permit it, in going to Honfleur I shall stop at Rouen; but, as I presume that you are like me and that you hate surprises, I shall warn you some time beforehand. You tell me that I work well. Is it a cruel mockery? Many people, not counting myself, think that I do not do anything very great. To work: that is to work without ceasing; that is to have no more feeling, no more dreaming; Always your very devoted friend. I have always dreamed of reading (in its entirety) the "Tentation" and another strange book of which you have published no fragment (Novembre). And how goes Carthage? Baudelaire to FlaubertEnd of January, 1862. MY DEAR FLAUBERT, I have committed an act of desperation, a madness, that I am changing into an act of wisdom by my persistence. If I had time enough (it would take very long) I would amuse you greatly by recounting my academical visits to you. I am told that you are closely connected with Sandeau (who said, some time ago, to a friend of mine: "Oh, does M. Baudelaire write prose?"). I should be very much obliged if you would write to him what you think of me. I shall go and see him and will explain the meaning of this candidature which has surprised some of these gentlemen so much. For a very long time I have wished to send you a brochure on Wagner, beyond which I do not know what to send. But, what is very absurd for On Monday last, in the "Constitutionnel" Sainte-Beuve wrote a masterly article, a pamphlet, enough to make one die with laughing, on the subject of candidates. Always yours devotedly. Baudelaire to FlaubertPARIS, 31st January, 1862. MY DEAR FLAUBERT, You are a true warrior. You deserve to be in the Sacred Legions. You have the blind faith of friendship, which implies the true statesman (sic). But, good recluse, you have not read Sainte-Beuve's famous article on the Academy and the candidateships. This has been the talk for a week, and of necessity it has re-echoed violently in the Academy. Maxime du Camp told me that I was disgraced, but I am persisting in paying my visits, although certain academicians have declared (can it be really true?) that they would not even receive me at their houses. I have committed a rash action of which I do not repent. Even if I should not obtain a single vote, I shall not repent of it. An election takes place on February 6th, but it is from the last one (Lacordaire, February 20th) that I Doubtless, we shall see each other soon. I dream always of solitude, and if I go away before your return I will pay you a visit for some hours down there. How is it that you have not guessed that Baudelaire would rather be Auguste Barbier, ThÉophile Gautier, Banville, Flaubert, Leconte de Lisle—that is to say, pure literature? That was understood immediately by a few friends, and has gained me some sympathy. Thank you and yours always. Have you noticed that to write with a steel pen is like walking on unsteady stones with sabots? Baudelaire to FlaubertPARIS, 3rd February, 1862. MY DEAR FRIEND, M. Sandeau was charming, his wife was charming, and I really believe that I was as charming as they were, since we all held a concert in your honour, so harmonious that it was like a veritable trio performed by consummate artists. Seriously, Mme. Sandeau's enthusiasm is great, and in her you have an advocate, a more than zealous panegyrist. That greatly excited my rivalry, and I succeeded in finding some reasons for eulogy that she had forgotten. Here is Sandeau's letter. Here is a little paper which will perhaps interest you. Yours always. Hope to see you soon. Mignon aspirant au Ciel. SOME REMARKS ON BAUDELAIRE'S INFLUENCE |
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