fringe of ordinary sane life, and near the
close of life itself. In _Sylvie_ he had not drifted so far; and it is
perhaps his best diploma-piece.[243]

[Sidenote: And especially _Sylvie_.]

For _Sylvie_, with its sub-title, "Souvenirs du Valois," surely exhibits
Gerard, outside the pure travel-books, at his very best, as far as
concerns that mixture of _reve_ and _realite_--the far-off goal of
Gautier's[244] _Chimere_--which has been spoken of. The author comes out
of a theatre where he has only seen Her, having never, though a constant
worshipper, troubled himself to ask, much less to seek out, what She
might be off the stage. And here we may give an actual piece of him.

We were living then in a strange kind of time,[245] one of
those which are wont to come after revolutions, or the
decadences of great reigns. There was no longer any
gallantry of the heroic kind, as in the time of the Fronde;
no vice, elegant and in full dress, as in that of the
Regency; no "Directory" scepticism and foolish orgies. It
was a mixture of activity, hesitation, and idleness--of
brilliant utopias; of religious or philosophical aspiration;
of vague enthusiasms mingled with certain instincts of a
sort of Renaissance. Men were weary of past discords; of
uncertain hopes, much as in the time of Petronius or
Peregrinus. The materialist part of us hungered for the
bouquet of roses which in the hands of Isis was to
regenerate it--the Goddess, eternally young and pure,
appeared to us at night and made us ashamed of the hours we
had lost in the day. We were not at the age of ambition, and
the greedy hunt for place and honours kept us out of
possible spheres of work. Only the poet's Ivory Tower
remained for us, and we climbed it ever higher and higher to
be clear of the mob. At the heights whither our masters
guided us we breathed at last the pure air of solitude; we
drank in the golden cup of legend; we were intoxicated with
poetry and with love. But, alas! it was only love of vague
forms; of tints roseal and azure; of metaphysical phantoms.
The real woman, seen close, revolted our ingenuousness: we
would have had her a queen or a goddess, and to draw near
her was fatal.

But he went from the play to his club, and there somebody asked him for
what person (in such cases one regrets _laquelle_) he went so constan