ten sayest wicked things.

"(I see the spiders' webs above the lofty windows.)

"Our wardrobe is very old; see how the fire reddens its sad panels! the
weary curtains are as old, and the tapestry on the arm-chairs stripped of
paint, and the old engravings, and all these old things. Does it not seem
to thee that even these blue birds are discoloured by time?

"(Dream not of the spiders' webs that tremble above the lofty windows.)

"Thou lovest all that, and that is why I live by thee. When one of my poems
appeared, didst thou not desire, my sister, whose looks are full of
yesterdays, the words, the grace of faded things? New objects displease
thee; thee also do they frighten with their loud boldness, and thou feelest
as if thou shouldest use them--a difficult thing indeed to do, for thou
hast no taste for action.

"Come, close thy old German almanack that thou readest with attention,
though it appeared more than a hundred years ago, and the Kings it
announces are all dead, and, lying on this antique carpet, my head leaned
upon thy charitable knees, on the pale robe, oh! calm child, I will speak
with thee for hours; there are no fields, and the streets are empty, I will
speak to thee of our furniture.

"Thou art abstracted?

"(The spiders' webs are shivering above the lofty windows.)"

To argue about these forgotten pages would be futile. We, the "ten superior
persons scattered through the universe" think these prose poems the
concrete essence, the osmazome of literature, the essential oil of art,
others, those in the stalls, will judge them to be the aberrations of a
refined mind, distorted with hatred of the commonplace; the pit will
immediately declare them to be nonsense, and will return with satisfaction
to the last leading article in the daily paper.

* * * * *

"_J'ai fait mes adieux a ma mere et je viens pour vous faire les
miens_ and other absurdities by Ponson du Terrail amused us many a year
in France, and in later days similar bad grammar by Georges Ohnet has not
been lost upon us, but neither Ponson du Terrail nor Georges Ohnet sought
literary suffrage, such a thing could not be in France, but in England,
Rider Haggard, whose literary atrocities are more atrocious than his
accounts of slaughter, receives the attention of leading journals and
writes about the revival of Romance. As it is as difficult to write the
worst as the best conceivable sentence, I take this one