him with some disastrous theories. But as a matter of fact there was no great harm done. One resists in vain; one can only give of oneself, and all our work is only ourselves, because it knows none other but ourselves. It is in vain that Flaubert cries that he is absent from his work. He threw himself into it completely armed, as Decius into the chasm.

On looking into them it will be seen that Flaubert's ideas were not really his own. He had appropriated them in all directions, only reserving to himself the task of obscuring and confusing them.

Théophile Gautier, Baudelaire, and Louis Bouilhet thought much as he did. In this respect the Goncourts' journal is very instructive. One sees by what an abyss we are divided from the old masters, we who have learnt to read in the books of Darwin, Spencer, and Taine. But as great an abyss is yawning between us and the rising generation. Those who come after us will laugh at our methods and analyses. They do not understand us, and if we on our side are not careful we shall no longer know what it is that they wish to say. In this century ideas flit past with terrifying rapidity. The naturalism whose birth we saw is already dying, and it seems as though symbolism is ready to rejoin it in the bosom of the eternal Maia.

In this melancholy flux of states of mind and modes of thought the works of the old Flaubert stand erect and respected. That is sufficient reason for us to forgive the author the incoherences and contradictions so abundantly revealed by his letters and familiar conversations. Amid these contradictions there is one which we must bless and

admire Flaubert, who believed in nothing on earth, and asked more bitterly even than Ecclesiastes: "What profit hath a man of all his labour?" Flaubert was the most strenuous of literary workers. He worked fourteen hours a day. Losing much time in obtaining information and documents-which he did very badly, as he was lacking in critical faculty and in method devoting long afternoons to what M. Henry Laujol describes so well as "his roaring melancholy," sweating, blowing, gasping, giving himself infinite trouble, and bending over a table that huge frame intended for the fresh air of woodland, sea, and mountain, threatened by apoplexy, long before he was struck down by it, he combined, in the accomplishment of his work, the obstinacy of a frenzied scribe and the disinterested zeal of the great monastic scholars with the instinctive ardour of the artist and the bee.

Why, since he believed, hoped and desired nothing, did he abandon himself to such a heavy task? At all events he reconciled this antinomy when, at the height of his glory, he made this sad avowal: "After all, work is the best way of cheating life."

He was unhappy. If it was all a mistake, and if he was the victim of his false ideas, he none the less experienced real tortures. Let us avoid imitating the Abbé Bournisien, who denied the sufferings of Emma because she suffered from neither cold nor hunger. One man may not feel the iron teeth which bite into his flesh; another is worried by a swan'sdown pillow. Flaubert, like the Princess of the Renaissance," carried more than his burden of the boredom common to all well-born creatures."

He found some satisfaction in bellowing pitiable

maxims. Do not let us be too sorry for him. It is true that he had literary ideas which were absolutely untenable. He was one of those brave captains who cannot discuss war, but who win battles.

PAUL VERLAINE

S in 1780, there is this year also a poet in hospital. But to-dayand it was not so at the HôtelDieu, in the time of Gilbertthe bed has white curtains, and the guest is a real poet. His name is Paul Verlaine. He is no pale and melancholy young man, but an old vagabond, tired after thirty years' wandering along the roads.

To see him you would think he was a village sorcerer. With his bald head, bronzed and battered like an old pot, his small, glittering, slanting eyes, his flat face and inflated nostrils, he looks, with his short, sparse, harsh beard, like a Socrates without philosophy, and lacking in self-command.

His appearance surprises and shocks. His air is at once wild and wheedling, savage and familiar. A natural Socrates, or better still, a faun or satyr, a being half beast and half god, which alarms one like some natural force unsubmissive to any known law. Oh, yes, he is a vagabond, an old vagabond of the roads and faubourgs!

Once upon a time he was one of ourselves. He was brought up in pleasant obscurity, by a poor widow of great distinction, in the heart of the peaceful Batignolles. Like the rest of us, he studied in some lycée, and, like the rest, he took his bachelor's degree after having studied the classics sufficiently

to misunderstand them. And since education leads to everything, he entered one of the offices of the municipality. At that time Baron Haussmann, without knowing it, was collecting long-haired poets and little journalists on a large scale, in the offices of the Prefecture. Les châtiments was there read aloud, and Manet's painting praised. Paul Verlaine copied out his Poèmes saturniens on the office paper. I do not say that to find fault with him for so doing. In his first youth he lived like François Coppée, Albert Mérat, Léon Valade, and so many other poets, a prisoner of the desk, who went into the country on Sundays. This modest, monotonous existence, favourable to dreams and patient work upon verses, was that of the bulk of the Parnassians. Alone, or almost alone of this coterie, M. Jose-Maria de Heredia, although deprived of a great part of the treasure of his ancestors, the conquistadores, cut a figure as a young man of fashion, and smoked good cigars. His ties had as much distinction as his sonnets. We all sincerely despised the benefits of fortune. We loved only Glory, although we wished it to be discreet, and almost concealed. Paul Verlaine, in company with Catulle Mendès, Léon Dierz, and François Coppée, was a Parnassian from the very beginning. We advanced, I know not why, a claim to impassivity. M. Xavier de Ricard, the leading philosopher of the school, maintained ardently that Art must be of ice, and we never even perceived that this teacher of impassivity never wrote a single verse which was not a violent expression of his political, social, or religious passions. His wide apostolic forehead, flaming eyes, ascetic thinness and generous eloquence did not undeceive us. They were great days, those