mmanded armies. There was,
above all, an imposing and melancholy old fellow with a white beard,
whose old befrogged cloak, shabby boots, and old hat, which looked as if
snails had crawled over it, presented a poem of misery, and whom the
other Poles treated with a marked respect, for he had been a dictator
for three days.

It was, moreover, at the Princess Chocolawska's that I knew a singular
fool, who gained his bread by giving German lessons, and declared
himself a convert to Buddhism. On the mantle of the miserable room,
where he lived with a milliner of Saint-Germain, was enthroned an ugly
little Buddha in jade, fixing his hypnotized eyes on his navel, and
holding his great toes in his hands. The German professor accorded to
the idol the most profound veneration, but on the epoch of quarter-day
he was sometimes forced to carry him to the Mont-de-piete, upon which
he fell into a state of sombre chagrin, and did not recover his serenity
until he was able to make amends for his impious act. He never failed,
moreover, to renew his avowals in prosperous times, and finally to take
his god out of pawn.

As to Louis Miraz, he had the deep eyes, the pale complexion, and the
long and dishevelled hair of all those young men who come to town in
third-class carriages to conquer glory, who spend more for midnight oil
than for beefsteaks, and who, rich already with some manuscripts, have
thrown out to great Paris from the height of some hill in its environs
the classic defiance of Rastignac. At that time my hair was archaic
enough in length to grease the collar of my coat. Thus we were made to
understand each other, and Louis Miraz soon took me to his attic-room in
the Rue des Quatre-Vents, where he dragged two thousand alexandrines
over me.

[Illustration]

Seriously, they were fresh and charming verses, with the inspiration of
spring-tide, having the perfume of the first lilacs, and _Forest Birds_
(the title of that collection of poems which Louis Miraz published a
little while after he read them to me) will retain a place among the
volumes in the first rank of belles-lettres, by the side of those poets
of a single book--of the Daudet of the Amoureuses, for example.

For Miraz wrote no more verse. A young eaglet seeking the upper air, he
made his eyrie on the summit of Montmartre, and for quite a while we
lost sight of him. Then I found his name again in Sunday journals and
reviews, when he began to write those short and e