ould have held down my thumbs in
the Colosseum that a hundred gladiators might die and wash me free of my
Christian soul with their blood.

The study of Baudelaire aggravated the course of the disease. No longer is
it the grand barbaric face of Gautier; now it is the clean shaven face of
the mock priest, the slow, cold eyes and the sharp, cunning sneer of the
cynical libertine who will be tempted that he may better know the
worthlessness of temptation. "Les Fleurs du Mal!" beautiful flowers,
beautiful in sublime decay. What great record is yours, and were Hell a
reality how many souls would we find wreathed with your poisonous blossoms.
The village maiden goes to her Faust; the children of the nineteenth
century go to you, O Baudelaire, and having tasted of your deadly delight
all hope of repentance is vain. Flowers, beautiful in your sublime decay, I
press you to my lips; these northern solitudes, far from the rank Parisian
garden where I gathered you, are full of you, even as the sea-shell of the
sea, and the sun that sets on this wild moorland evokes the magical verse:--

"Un soir fait de rose et de bleu mystique
Nous echangerons un eclair unique
Comme un long sanglot tout charge d'adieux."

For months I fed on the mad and morbid literature that the enthusiasm of
1830 called into existence. The gloomy and sterile little pictures of
"Gaspard de la Nuit," or the elaborate criminality, "Les Contes Immoraux,"
laboriously invented lifeless things with creaky joints, pitiful lay
figures that fall to dust as soon as the book is closed, and in the dust
only the figures of the terrible ferryman and the unfortunate Dora remain.
"Madame Potiphar" cost me forty francs, and I never read more than a few
pages.

Like a pike after minnows, I pursued the works of Les Jeune France along
the quays and through every _passage_ in Paris. The money spent was
considerable, the waste of time enormous. One man's solitary work (he died
very young, but he is known to have excelled all in length of his hair and
the redness of his waistcoats) resisted my efforts to capture it. At last I
caught sight of the precious volume in a shop on the Quai Voltaire.
Trembling I asked the price. The man looked at me earnestly and answered,
"A hundred and fifty francs." No doubt it was a great deal of money, but I
paid it and rushed home to read. Many that had gone before had proved
disappointing, and I was obliged to admit had contributed litt