declared:
"It is not fit for the stage!" and the scoffers of the boulevards
revenged themselves for the emotion these magnificent verses had given
them by repeating: "It won't pay!" As for us, we were proud of the
friend who had dared to roll forth in a ringing peal, his splendid
golden rhymes, flashing the best product of his genius beneath the
artificial and murderous light of the lustres, and presenting his
personages in life-like size, heedless of the optical illusion of the
modern stage, of the dimness of opera-glass and defective vision.

Amid a motley crowd of scene shifters, firemen, and _figurants_ muffled
up in comforters, the poet approached us, his tall figure bent double,
his coat collar chillily turned up over his thin beard and long grizzled
hair. He seemed depressed. The scant applause of the hired claque and
literary friends confined to a corner of the house foretold a limited
number of representations, choice and rare spectators, and posters
rapidly replaced without giving his name a chance of being known. When
one has worked twenty of talent and life, this obstinate refusal of
the public to comprehend is wearying and disheartening, and one ends by
thinking: "Perhaps after all they are right." Fear paralyses and words
fail. Our acclamations and enthusiastic greetings somewhat cheered him.
"Really do you think so? Is it well done? 'Tis true I have given all I
knew." And his feverish hands anxiously clutched ours, his eyes full
of tears sought a sincere and reassuring glance. It was the imploring
anguish of the sick person, asking the doctor: "It is not true, I'm
not going to die?" No! poet, you will not die. The operettas and fairy
pieces that have had hundreds of representations and thousands of
spectators will be long since forgotten, scattered to the winds with
their last playbills, while your work will ever remain fresh and living.

As we stood on the now deserted pavement, exhorting and cheering him, a
loud contralto voice vulgarised by an Italian accent burst upon us.

"Hullo, artist! enough _pouegie_. Let's go and eat the _estoufato!_"

[Illustration: p058-069]

At the same moment a stout woman wrapped up in a hooded cape and a red
tartan shawl linked her arm in that of our friend, in a manner so
brutal and despotic that his countenance and attitude became at once
embarrassed.

"My wife," he said, then turning towards her with a hesitating smile:

"Suppose we take them home and show them h