val--Victorian to the end! A man who happened to be in
Marseilles at the time told me that "that vagabond poet, Pilleux,
appeared in one of the cafes, roaring drunk, and recited a marriage
poem--obscene, vicious, terrific. A crowd came in from the street to
listen. Some of them laughed. Others were frightened. He was an ugly
brute--well over six feet tall, with a blonde beard, a hooked nose,
and a pair of eyes that saw beyond reality. He was fascinating. He
could turn his eloquence off and on like a tap. He sat in a drunken
stupor, glaring at the crowd, until someone shouted: "_Eh bien,
Pilleux_--you were saying?" Then the deluge! He had a peasant's
acceptance of the elemental facts of life--it was raw, that hymn of
his! The women of the streets who had crowded into the caf listened
with a sort of terror; they admired him. One of them said: "Pilleux's
wife betrayed him." He lifted his glass and drank. "No, _ma petite_,"
he said politely, "she buried me."

That night his pack was stolen from him. He was too drunk to know or
to care. They say that he went from cafe to cafe, paying for wine with
verse, and getting it, too! At his heels a crowd of loafers, frowsy
women and dogs. His hat gone. His eyes mad. A trickle of wine through
his beard. Bellowing. Bellowing again--the untamed centaur cheated of
the doe!

And now, perhaps, I can get back to the reasons for this story. And I
am almost at the end of it....

In the most obscure alley in Marseilles there is a caf frequented by
sailors, riff-raff from the waterfront and thieves. Grimshaw appeared
there at midnight. A woman clung to his arm. She had no eyes for any
one else. Her name, I believe, was Marie--a very humble Magdalen of
that tragic back-water of civilization. Putting her cheek against
Grimshaw's arm, she listened to him with a curious patience as one
listens to the eloquence of the sea.

"This is no place for thee," he said to her. "Leave me now, _ma
petite_."

But she laughed and went with him. Imagine that room--foul air, sanded
floor, kerosene lamps, an odour of bad wine, tobacco, and stale
humanity. Grimshaw pushed his way to a table and sat down with a surly
Gascon and an enormous Negro from some American ship in the harbour.

They brought the poet wine but he did not drink it--sat staring at the
smoky ceiling, assailed by a sudden sharp vision of Dagmar and Waram
at Broadenham, alone together for the first time, perhaps on the
terrace in the starlig