ed in
his own room, and spoke to nobody.

A vague curiosity attracted me to him. One day I sat down by his side,
having taken up a book, too, to keep up appearances, a volume of De
Musset's poems.

And I began to run through "Rolla."

Suddenly my neighbor said to me, in good French:

"Do you know German, monsieur?"

"Not at all, monsieur."

"I am sorry for that. Since chance has thrown us side by side, I
could have lent you, I could have shown you, an inestimable
thing--this book which I hold in my hand."

"What is it pray?"

"It is a copy of my master, Schopenhauer, annotated with his own hand.
All the margins, as you may see, are covered with his handwriting."

I took the book from him reverently, and I gazed at those forms
incomprehensible to me, but which revealed the immortal thoughts of
the greatest shatterer of dreams who had ever dwelt on earth.

And De Musset's verses arose in my memory:

"Hast thou found out, Voltaire, that it is bliss to die,
Or does thy hideous smile over thy bleached bones fly?"

And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious
sarcasm, of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German
philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable.

Let us protest and let us be angry, let us be indignant or let us be
enthusiastic, Schopenhauer has marked humanity with the seal of his
disdain and of his disenchantment.

A disabused pleasure-seeker, he overthrew beliefs, hopes, poetic
ideal, and chimeras, destroyed the aspirations, ravaged the confidence
of souls, killed love, dragged down the chivalrous worship of women,
crushed the illusions of hearts and accomplished the most gigantic
talk ever attempted by skepticism. He passed over everything with his
mocking spirit, and left everything empty. And even to-day those who
execrate him seem to carry portions of his thought, in spite of
themselves, in their own souls.

"So, then, you were intimately acquainted with Schopenhauer?" I said
to the German.

He smiled sadly.

"Up to the time of his death, monsieur."

And he spoke to me about the philosopher and told me about the almost
supernatural impression which this strange being made on all who came
near him.

He gave me an account of the interview of the old iconoclast with a
French politician, a doctrinaire Republican, who wanted to get a
glimpse of this man, and found him in a noisy tavern, seated in the
midst of his disciples, dry, wrinkled, l