There is something of charm in the French idea of taking their discussions to the sunlight or the shadow under the stars, either within or outside the cafe, where you feel the passing of the world, and the poetry is of one piece with life itself, not the result of stuffy studios, and excessively ornate library corners, where books crowd out the quality of people and things. You felt that the cafe was the place for it, and if the acrobat came and sang, it was all of one fabric and it was as good for the poetry, as it was for the eye and the ear that absorbed it. Despite the different phases of the spectacle of Tuesday, at the Closerie de Lilas, you had the feeling of its splendour, its excellence, and, most of all, of its reality, its relationship to every other phase of life, and not of the hypersensitivity of the thing as we still consider it among ourselves in general; and if you heard the name of Paul Fort, or Francis Jammes, it was a definite issue in daily life, equal with the name of the great statesmen in importance, you were being introduced into a sphere of activities of the utmost importance, _that_ poetry was something to be reckoned with. It was not merely to hear oneself talk that artists like Mallarme held forth with distinction, that artists like de Regnier and Fort devote themselves, however secretly, or however openly to the sacred theme. They had but one intention, and that to arrive at, and assist in the realization of the best state of poetry, that shall have carried the art further on its way logically, and in accordance with the principles which they have created for their time; endeavoring always to create fresh values, new points of contact with the prevailing as well as with the older outlines of the classics. It was, then, a spectacle, from our removed point of view, the gathering of the poetic multitude around the cafe tables, over the Dubonnet, the grenadines, and the cafe noir, of a Tuesday evening. It gave one a sense of perpetuity, of the indestructibility of art, in spite of the obstacles encountered in the run of the day, that the artist has the advantage over the layman in being qualified to set down, in shapes imperishable, those states of his imagination which are the shapes of life and of nature.