is as the vibration of a fairy
orchestra, flute and violin disappearing in a silver mist; but the clouds
break, and all the enchantment of a spring garden appears in a shaft of
sudden sunlight.

"L'ephemere idole, au frisson du printemps,
Sentant des renouveaux eclore,
Le guepa de satins si lointains et d'antan
Rose exiles des flores!

"Le jardin rima ses branches de lilas;
Aux murs, les roses tremieres;
La terre etala, pour feter les las,
Des divans vert lumiere;

"Des rires ailes peuplerent le jardin;
Souriants des caresses breves,
Des oiseaux joyeux, jaunes, incarnadins
Vibrerent aux ciels de reve."

But to the devil with literature, I am sick of it; who the deuce cares if
Gustave Kahn writes well or badly. Yesterday I met a chappie whose views of
life coincide with mine. "A ripping good dinner," he says; "get a skinful
of champagne inside you, go to bed when it is light, and get up when you
are rested." This seems to me as concise as it is admirable; indeed there
is little to add to it ... a note or two concerning women might come in,
but I don't know, "a skinful of champagne" implies everything.

Each century has its special ideal, the ideal of the nineteenth is a young
man. The seventeenth century is only woman--see the tapestries, the
delightful goddesses who have discarded their hoops and heels to appear in
still more delightful nakedness, the noble woods, the tall castles, with
the hunters looking round; no servile archaeology chills the fancy, it is
but a delightful whim; and this treatment of antiquity is the highest proof
of the genius of the seventeenth century. See the Fragonards--the ladies in
high-peaked bodices, their little ankles showing amid the snow of the
petticoats. Up they go; you can almost hear their light false voices into
the summer of the leaves, where Loves are garlanded even as of roses. Masks
and arrows are everywhere, all the machinery of light and gracious days. In
the Watteaus the note is more pensive; there is satin and sunset, plausive
gestures and reluctance--false reluctance; the guitar is tinkling, and
exquisite are the notes in the languid evening; and there is the Pierrot,
that marvellous white animal, sensual and witty and glad, the soul of the
century--ankles and epigrams everywhere, for love was not then sentimental,
it was false and a little cruel; see the furniture and the polished floor,
and the tapestrie