t la luxure amusante et sa pente
Vers la chair de ce garcon vierge que cela tente
D'aimer des seins legers et ce gentil babil.

Il a vaincu la femme belle au coeur subtil
Etalant ces bras frais et sa gorge excitante;
Il a vaincu l'enfer, il rentre dans sa tente
Avec un lourd trophee a son bras pueril.

Avec la lance qui perca le flanc supreme
Il a gueri le roi, le voici roi lui-meme,
Et pretre du tres-saint tresor essentiel;

En robe d'or il adore, gloire et symbole,
Le vase pur ou resplendit le sang reel,
Et, o ces voix d'enfants chantent dans la coupole.

I know of no more perfect thing than this sonnet. The hiatus in the last
line was at first a little trying, but I have learned to love it; not in
Baudelaire nor even in Poe is there more beautiful poetry to be found. Poe,
unread and ill-understood in America and England, here, thou art an
integral part of our artistic life.

The Island o' Fay, Silence, Elionore, were the familiar spirits of an
apartment beautiful with tapestry and palms; Swinburne and Rossetti were
the English poets I read there; and in a golden bondage, I, a unit in the
generation they have enslaved, clanked my fetters and trailed my golden
chain. I had begun a set of stories in many various metres, to be called
"Roses of Midnight." One of the characteristics of the volume was that
daylight was banished from its pages. In the sensual lamplight of yellow
boudoirs, or the wild moonlight of centenarian forests, my fantastic loves
lived out their lives, died with the dawn which was supposed to be an
awakening to consciousness of reality.

CHAPTER V

A last hour of vivid blue and gold glare; but now the twilight sheds softly
upon the darting jays, and only the little oval frames catch the fleeting
beams. I go to the miniatures. Amid the parliamentary faces, all strictly
garrotted with many-folded handkerchiefs, there is a metal frame enchased
with rubies and a few emeralds. And this _chef d'oeuvre_ of antique
workmanship surrounds a sharp, shrewdish, modern face, withal pretty. Fair
she is and thin.

She is a woman of thirty,--no,--she is the woman of thirty. Balzac has
written some admirable pages on this subject; my memory of them is vague
and uncertain, although durable, as all memories of him must be. But that
marvellous story, or rather study, has been blunted in my knowledge of this
tiny face with the fine masses of hair drawn up fr