lid
countrified buildings, of court-yards swarming with poultry, fruit shops
whose doors are ornamented with little brooms of black feathers: just
such a suburban street as Hervier might have painted.... We pushed open
the door of a house, and found ourselves in the presence of the lord of
epithet. The furniture was of gilded wood, covered with red damask,
after the heavy Venetian style; there were fine old pictures of the
Italian school; above the chimney a mirror innocent of quicksilver, on
which were scraped colored arabesques and various Persian
characters,--such a picture of meagre sumptuousness and faded splendor
as one would find in the rooms of a retired actress, who had come in for
some pictures through the bankruptcy of an Italian manager.

When we asked him if we were disturbing him, he answered: "Not at all. I
never work at home. I get through my 'copy' at the printing-office. They
set up the type as I write. The smell of the printers' ink is a sure
stimulant to work, for one feels the 'copy' must be handed in. I could
write only a novel in this way now; unless I saw ten lines printed I
could not get on to the next ten. The proof-sheet serves as a test to
one's work. That which is already done becomes impersonal, but the
actual 'copy' is part of yourself; it hangs like filaments from the root
of your literary life, and has not yet been torn away. I have always
been preparing corners where I should do my work, but when installed
there I found I could do nothing. I must be in the midst of things, and
can work only when a racket is going on about me; whereas, when I shut
myself up for work the solitude tells upon me and makes me sad."

From there Gautier got on the subject of the 'Queen of Sheba.' We
admitted our infirmity, our physical incapacity of taking in musical
sound; and indeed, a military band is the highest musical enjoyment of
which we are capable. Whereupon Gautier said, "Well, I'm delighted to
hear that: I am just like you; I prefer silence to music. I do know bad
music from good, because part of my life was spent with a singer, but
both are quite indifferent to me. Still it is curious that all the
literary men of our day feel the same about music. Balzac abhorred it,
Hugo cannot endure it, Lamartine has a horror of it. There are only a
few painters who have a taste for it."

Then Gautier fell to complaining of the times. "Perhaps I am getting an
old man, but I begin to feel as if there were no m