_ would be
finished.

THE GONCOURTS

My first visit to Edmond de Goncourt was in May 1892. I remember my
immense curiosity about that 'House Beautiful,' at Auteuil, of which I
had heard so much, and my excitement as I rang the bell, and was shown
at once into the garden, where Goncourt was just saying good-bye to some
friends. He was carelessly dressed, without a collar, and with the usual
loosely knotted large white scarf rolled round his neck. He was wearing
a straw hat, and it was only afterwards that I could see the fine sweep
of the white hair, falling across the forehead. I thought him the most
distinguished-looking man of letters I had ever seen; for he had at once
the distinction of race, of fine breeding, and of that delicate artistic
genius which, with him, was so intimately a part of things beautiful and
distinguished. He had the eyes of an old eagle; a general air of
dignified collectedness; a rare, and a rarely charming, smile, which
came out, like a ray of sunshine, in the instinctive pleasure of having
said a witty or graceful thing to which one's response had been
immediate. When he took me indoors, into that house which was a museum,
I noticed the delicacy of his hands, and the tenderness with which he
handled his treasures, touching them as if he loved them, with little,
unconscious murmurs: _Quel gout! quel gout!_ These rose-coloured rooms,
with their embroidered ceilings, were filled with cabinets of beautiful
things, Japanese carvings, and prints (the miraculous 'Plongeuses'!),
always in perfect condition (_Je cherche le beau_); albums had been made
for him in Japan, and in these he inserted prints, mounting others upon
silver and gold paper, which formed a sort of frame. He showed me his
eighteenth-century designs, among which I remember his pointing out one
(a Chardin, I think) as the first he had ever bought; he had been
sixteen at the time, and he bought it for twelve francs.

When we came to the study, the room in which he worked, he showed me all
his own first editions, carefully bound, and first editions of
Flaubert, Baudelaire, Gautier, with those, less interesting to me, of
the men of later generations. He spoke of himself and his brother with a
serene pride, which seemed to me perfectly dignified and appropriate;
and I remember his speaking (with a parenthetic disdain of the
_brouillard scandinave_, in which it seemed to him that France was
trying to envelop herself; at the best