woods of Verrieres and
Romainville, to the dances on the lawn, to the suppers under the trees;
he who used to talk with her as she sat near the lamp in the rear of the
shop on the long winter evenings; he who shared her crust of bread
moistened with the sweat of her brow, and her love at once sublime and
poor; he, that same man, after abandoning her, finds her after a night of
orgy, pale and leaden, forever lost, with hunger on her lips and
prostitution in her heart.

About this time two poets, whose genius was second only to that of
Napoleon, consecrated their lives to the work of collecting the elements
of anguish and of grief scattered over the universe. Goethe, the
patriarch of a new literature, after painting in his Weyther the passion
which leads to suicide, traced in his Faust the most sombre human
character which has ever represented evil and unhappiness. His writings
began to pass from Germany into France. From his studio, surrounded by
pictures and statues, rich, happy, and at ease, he watched with a
paternal smile his gloomy creations marching in dismal procession across
the frontiers of France. Byron replied to him in a cry of grief which
made Greece tremble, and hung Manfred over the abyss, as if oblivion were
the solution of the hideous enigma with which he enveloped him.

Pardon, great poets! who are now but ashes and who sleep in peace!
Pardon, ye demigods, for I am only a child who suffers. But while I write
all this I can not but curse you. Why did you not sing of the perfume of
flowers, of the voices of nature, of hope and of love, of the vine and
the sun, of the azure heavens and of beauty? You must have understood
life, you must have suffered; the world was crumbling to pieces about
you; you wept on its ruins and you despaired; your mistresses were false;
your friends calumniated, your compatriots misunderstood; your heart was
empty; death was in your eyes, and you were the Colossi of grief. But
tell me, noble Goethe, was there no more consoling voice in the religious
murmur of your old German forests? You, for whom beautiful poesy was the
sister of science, could not they find in immortal nature a healing plant
for the heart of their favorite? You, who were a pantheist, and antique
poet of Greece, a lover of sacred forms, could you not put a little honey
in the beautiful vases you made; you who had only to smile and allow the
bees to come to your lips? And thou, Byron, hadst thou not near Ravenna,