odigious strength which later on enabled him to
strike a 520-pound blow on a Turk's-head. In appearance Gautier was a
large corpulent man with a leonine countenance, swarthy complexion,
long black hair falling over his shoulders, black beard, and brilliant
black eyes; an Oriental in looks as well as in some of his tastes. He
had a passion for cats. His house was overrun by them, and he seldom
wrote without having one on his lap. The privations he underwent
during the siege of Paris, doubly hard to a man of Gautier's
Gargantuesque appetite, no doubt hastened his death. He died on
October 23d, 1872, of hypertrophy of the heart.

Gautier is one of those writers of whom one may say a vast deal of
good and a vast deal of harm. His admirers think that justice has not
been done him, that his fame will go on rising and his name will live
as one of the great writers of France; others think that his name may
perhaps not entirely disappear, but that if he is remembered at all it
will be solely as the author of 'Emaux et Camees' (Enamels and
Cameos). He wrote in his youth a book that did him great harm in the
eyes of the public; but he has written something else besides
'Mademoiselle de Maupin,' and both in prose and poetry we shall find a
good deal to admire in him. One thing is certain: he is a marvelous
stylist. In his earliest poems Gautier already possesses that
admirable artistic skill that prompts him to choose his words as a
painter his colors, or a jeweler his gems and stones, so as to produce
the most brilliant effects: these first compositions also have a
grace, a charm, that we shall find lacking later on, for as he
proceeds with his work he pays more and more attention to form and
finish.

'Albertus, or Soul and Sin,' the closing poem of Gautier's first
collection, is a "semi-diabolic, semi-fashionable" legend. An old
witch, Veronica, a second Meg Merrilies, transforms herself into a
beautiful maiden and makes love to Albertus, a young artist--otherwise
Gautier himself. He cares for nothing but his art, but falls a victim
to the spell cast over him by the siren. At the stroke of midnight,
Veronica, to the young man's horror, from a beautiful woman changes
back to the old hag she was, and carries him off to a place where
witches, sorcerers, hobgoblins, harpies, ghouls, and other frightful
creatures are holding a monstrous saturnalia; at the end of which,
Albertus is left for dead in a ditch of the Appian Way with brok