who would have been, and would be, not a little offended at
being classed with _l'abonne_. The reproach of "over-styling" has been
cast at Gautier by critics of the most different types, and--more
curiously at first sight than after a moment's reflection--by some who
are themselves style-mad, but whose favourite vanities in that matter
are different from his. I can hardly think of any writer--Herrick as
treated by Hazlitt is the chief exception that occurs to me at the
moment--against whom this cheap and obvious, though, alas! not very
frequently possible, charge of "bright far-shining emptiness," of
glittering frigidity, of colour without flesh and blood, of art without
matter, etc., etc., has been cast so violently--or so unjustly. In
literature, as in law and war, the favourite method of offensive defence
is to reserve your _triarii_, your "colophon" of arms or arguement, to
the last; but there are cases in all three where it is best to carry an
important point at once and hold it. I think that this is one of these
cases; and I do not think that the operation can be conducted with
better chance of success than by inserting here that outline,[198] with
specimens, of _La Morte Amoureuse_ which has been already promised--or
threatened--in the Preface. For here the glamour--if it be only
glamour--of the style will have disappeared; the matter will remain.

[Sidenote: Abstract (with translations) of _La Morte
Amoureuse_.]

You ask me, my brother, if I have ever loved. I answer
"Yes." But it is a wild and terrible story, a memory whose
ashes, with all my sixty-six years, I hardly dare to
disturb. To you I can refuse nothing, but I would not tell
the tale to a less experienced soul. The facts are so
strange that I myself cannot believe in their actual
occurrence. For three years I was the victim of a diabolical
delusion, and every night--God grant it was a dream--I, a
poor country priest, led the life of the lost, the life of
the worldling and the debauchee. A single chance of too
great complacency went near to destroy my soul; but at last,
with God's aid and my patron saint's, I exorcised the evil
spirit which had gained possession of me. Till then my life
was double, and the counterpart by night was utterly
different from the life by day. By day I was a priest of the
Lord, pure, and busied with holy things. By night, no sooner