In the summer of 1865 Baudelaire spent several days in Paris, seeing Banville and other friends of his. They found him unchanged; his eyes clear; his voice musical; he talked as wonderfully as ever. They used all their logic to persuade him to remain in Paris. He refused, even after Gautier had said to him: "You are astonishing: can one conceive your mania of eternalizing yourself in a land where one is only bored to extinction?" He laughed; promised to return: he never did; it was the last day when his friends possessed him entirely. In his years of exile he printed Poe's _Histoires grotesques et sérieuses_ (1864); _Les nouvelles fleurs du mal_ in _La Parnasse contemporaine_ (1866). In 1865 Poulet-Malassis printed _Les épaves de Charles Baudelaire._ Avec une eau-forte de Félicien Rops. Amsterdam. A l'enseigne du Coq. 1865. 165 pages. "Avertissement de l'Éditeur. "Ce recueil est composé de morceaux poétiques, pour la plupart condamnés ou inédits, auxquels M. Charles Baudelaire n'a pas cru devoir faire place dans l'édition définitive des _Fleurs du mal._ "Cela explique son titre. "M. Charles Baudelaire a fait don, sans réserve, de ces poëmes, à un ami qui juge à propos de les publier, parce qu'il se flatte de les goûter, et qu'il est à un âge où l'on aime encore à faire partager ses sentiments à des amis auxquels on prête ses vertus. "L'auteur sera avisé de cette publication en même temps que les deux cents soixantes lectures probables qui figurent--à peu près--pour son éditeur bénévole, le public littéraire en France, depuis que les bêtes y ont décidément usurpé la parole sur les hommes." I have before me two copies of this rare edition, printed on yellow Holland paper; one numbered 100, the other 194. The second has inscribed in ink: _A Monsieur Rossetti pour remplir les intentions de l'auteur avec les civilités de l'éditeur A. P. Malassis._ This was sent on the part of Baudelaire to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It is superbly bound in a kind of red-purple thick leather binding, with pale gold squares, in the form of the frame of a picture; done, certainly, with great taste. On January 3, 1865, Baudelaire writes a letter to his mother; a letter that pains one as one reads it: so resigned he seems to be, yet never in his life less resigned to his fate. He fears that God might deprive him of even happiness; that it is more difficult to think than to write a book; that if only he were certain of having five or six years before him he might execute all that remained for him to do; that he has the fixed idea of death; that he has suffered so much already that he believes many things may be forgiven him (sins of concupiscence, sins of conscience, sins one never forgets) as he has been punished so much.