nt of the artificial
ecstasies of the drug, but to talk of art, literature, and love, as in
the days of the Decameron--here Baudelaire made what might be called his
historic impression upon literature. He was at that time twenty-eight
years of age; and even in that assemblage, in those surroundings, his
personality was striking. His black hair, worn close to the head, grew
in regular scallops over a forehead of dazzling whiteness; his eyes, the
color of Spanish tobacco, were spiritual, deep, penetrating, perhaps too
insistently so, in expression; the mobile sinuous mouth had the ironical
voluptuous lips that Leonardo da Vinci loved to paint; the nose was
delicate and sensitive, with quivering nostrils; a deep dimple
accentuated the chin; the bluish-black tint of the shaven skin, softened
with rice-powder, contrasted with the clear rose and white of the upper
part of his cheeks. Always dressed with meticulous neatness and
simplicity, following English rather than French taste; in manner
punctiliously observant of the strictest conventionality, scrupulously,
even excessively polite; in talk measuring his phrases, using only the
most select terms, and pronouncing certain words as if the sound itself
possessed a certain subtle, mystical value,--throwing his voice into
capitals and italics;--in contrast with the dress and manners about him,
he, according to Gautier, looked like a dandy who had strayed
into Bohemia.

The contrast was no less violent between Baudelaire's form and the
substance of his conversation. With a simple, natural, and perfectly
impartial manner, as if he were conveying commonplace information about
every-day life, he would advance some axiom monstrously Satanic, or
sustain, with the utmost grace and coolness, some mathematical
extravagance in the way of a theory. And no one could so inflexibly push
a paradox to the uttermost limits, regardless of consequences to
received notions of morality or religion; always employing the most
rigorous methods of logic and reason. His wit was found to lie neither
in words nor thoughts, but in the peculiar standpoint from which he
regarded things, a standpoint which altered their outlines,--like those
of objects looked down upon from a bird's flight, or looked up to on a
ceiling. In this way, to continue the exposition of Gautier, Baudelaire
saw relations inappreciable to others, whose logical bizarrerie was
startling.

His first productions were critical articles fo