ad pallor of the zenith, like a white flag fluttering faintly,
Symbolists and Decadents appeared. Never before was there so sudden a flux
and conflux of artistic desire, such aspiration in the soul of man, such
rage of passion, such fainting fever, such cerebral erethism. The roar and
dust of the daily battle of the Realists was continued under the flush of
the sunset, the arms of the Romantics glittered, the pale spiritual
Symbolists watched and waited, none knowing yet of their presence. In such
an hour of artistic convulsion and renewal of thought thou wert, and thou
wert a magnificent rallying point for all comers; it was thou who didst
theorise our confused aspirations, and by thy holy example didst save us
from all base commercialism, from all hateful prostitution; thou wert ever
our high priest, and from thy high altar turned to us the white host, the
ideal, the true and living God of all men.

Cabaner, I see you now entering the "Nouvelle Athenes;" you are a little
tired after your long weary walk, but you lament not and you never cry out
against the public that will accept neither your music nor your poetry. But
though you are tired and footsore, you are ready to aestheticise till the
_cafe_ closes; for you the homeless ones are waiting: there they are,
some three or four, and you will take them to your strange room, furnished
with the American organ, the fountain, and the decapitated Venus, and you
give them a crust each and cover them with what clothes you have; and, when
clothes are lacking, with plaster casts, and though you will take but a
glass of milk yourself, you will find a few sous to give them _lager_
to cool their thirsty throats. So you have ever lived--a blameless life is
yours, no base thought has ever entered there, not even a woman's love; art
and friends, that is all.

Reader, do you know of anything more angelic? If you do you are more
fortunate than I have been.

CHAPTER VII

THE SYNTHESIS OF THE NOUVELLE ATHENES

Two dominant notes in my character--an original hatred of my native
country, and a brutal loathing of the religion I was brought up in. All the
aspects of my native country are violently disagreeable to me, and I cannot
think of the place I was born in without a sensation akin to nausea. These
feelings are inherent and inveterate in me. I am instinctively averse to my
own countrymen; they are at once remote and repulsive; but with Frenchmen I
am conscious of a sense of