us to note the subtle manner in which, for all his
declarations about the Middle Ages, he is attracted irresistibly to that
wonderful artificial fairy-land, associated for us for all time with the
genius of Watteau, wherein pale roses and fountains and
yew-hedges are the background for the fatal sweetness of Columbine and
the dancing feet of Arlequino.

This Garden-of-Versailles cult, with its cold moonlight and its faint
music has become, with the sad-gay Pierrot as its tutelary deity, one
of the most appealing "motifs" in modern art.

Almost all of us have worshipped, at some time or another, at this
wistful fairy shrine, and have laid our single white rose on its marble
pavement, under the dark trees.

Yes; Verlaine may boast of his faithful loyalty to the "haute
theologie et solide morale, guide par la folie unique de la Croix" of
that "Moyen Age enorme et delicat" which inspires his spirit. The
fact remains that none--none among all the most infatuated
frequenters of the perverse fairy-land of Watteau's exquisite
dreams--gives himself up more wantonly to the artifice within artifice,
to themask below mask, of these dancers to tambourines amid the
"boulingrins du pare aulique" of mock-classic fantasies. He gives
himself up to this Watteau cult all the more easily because he
himself has so infantile a heart. He is like a child who enters some
elaborate masked ball in his own gala dress. It is natural to him to be
perverse and wistful and tragically gay. It is natural to him to foot it
in the moonlight along with the Marquis of Carabas.

That Nuit du Walpurgis classique of his, with its "jardin de Lenotre,
correct, ridicule et charmant," is one of the most delicate evocations
of this _genre._ One sees these strange figures, "ces spectres agites,"
as if they were passing from twilight to twilight through the silvery
mists of some pale Corot-picture, passing into thin air, into the
shadow of a shadow, into the dream of a dream, into nothingness
and oblivion; but passing gaily and wantonly--to the music of
mandolines, to the blowing of fairy horns!

N'importe! ils vont toujours, les febriles fantomes,
Menant leur ronde vaste et morne, et tressautant
Comme dans un rayon de soleil des atomes,
Et s'evaporent a l'instant

Humide et bleme ou l'aube eteint l'un apres l'autre
Les cors, en sorte qu'il ne reste absolument
Plus rien--absolument--qu'un jardin de Lenotre
Cor