enced insidious delights in touching
this diminutive book whose cover of Japan vellum, as white as curdled
milk, were held together by two silk bands, one of Chinese rose, the
other of black.

Hidden behind the cover, the black band rejoined the rose which rested
like a touch of modern Japanese paint or like a lascivious adjutant
against the antique white, against the candid carnation tint of the
book, and enlaced it, united its sombre color with the light color
into a light rosette. It insinuated a faint warning of that regret, a
vague menace of that sadness which succeeds the ended transports and
the calmed excitements of the senses.

Des Esseintes placed _l'Apres-midi du faune_ on the table and examined
another little book he had printed, an anthology of prose poems, a
tiny chapel, placed under the invocation of Baudelaire and opening on
the parvise of his poems.

This anthology comprised a selection of _Gaspard de la nuit_ of that
fantastic Aloysius Bertrand who had transferred the behavior of
Leonard in prose and, with his metallic oxydes, painted little
pictures whose vivid colors sparkle like those of clear enamels. To
this, Des Esseintes had joined _le Vox populi_ of Villiers, a superb
piece of work in a hammered, golden style after the manner of Leconte
de Lisle and of Flaubert, and some selections from that delicate
_livre de Jade_ whose exotic perfume of ginseng and of tea blends with
the odorous freshness of water babbling along the book, under
moonlight.

But in this collection had been gathered certain poems resurrected
from defunct reviews: _le Demon de l'analogie_, _la Pipe_, _le Pauvre
enfant pale_, _le Spectacle interrompu_, _le Phenomene futur_, and
especially _Plaintes d'automne_ and _Frisson d'hiver_ which were
Mallarme's masterpieces and were also celebrated among the
masterpieces of prose poems, for they united such a magnificently
delicate language that they cradled, like a melancholy incantation or
a maddening melody, thoughts of an irresistible suggestiveness,
pulsations of the soul of a sensitive person whose excited nerves
vibrate with a keenness which penetrates ravishingly and induces a
sadness.

Of all the forms of literature, that of the prose poem was the form
Des Esseintes preferred. Handled by an alchemist of genius, it
contained in its slender volume the strength of the novel whose
analytic developments and descriptive redundancies it suppressed.
Quite often, Des Esseintes had