Poulet-Malassis came from Alençon to Paris, and began by printing the _Odes Funambulesques_ of Théodore de Banville early in 1857, before he completed the publication of _Les Fleurs du Mal_ in July of that year. Baudelaire wrote to him, saying that he did not want popularity, "_mais un bel éreintage général qui attirera la curiosité."_ He asked him to be sparing in blank spaces on the pages; and to use certain archaisms and touches of red. These touches of red are given on the title-page; they have a decorative effect. He said that he had a natural horror of the over-use of inverted commas, which have a way of spoiling the text. He must have a unique system of his own. "I must have," he insists, "in this kind of production, the one admissible thing, that is, perfection." There one sees his unerring instinct; his sense of the exact value of words. Yet he writes to his publisher, underlining the phrase: "You know certain things better than I do, but whenever there is, on my part, no radical repulsion, follow your taste." He rages against de Broise's perpetual reproaches with regard to _les surcharges de M. Baudelaire--_the "author's corrections." He points out certain printer's mistakes, page 44 for page 45, and _guères_ rhyming with _vulgaire._ There was no time to correct these errors; they remain so in the printed pages of my copy. It is interesting, in regard to this question, to find in the first text of _Le Vin de l'Assassin_ these lines: "Ma femme est morte, je suis libre! Je puis donc boire tout mon saoul" In the second edition one reads "soûl." I find in Brachet's _Dictionnaire Étymologique_ this definition of the word "_soûl,_ ancien français, _saoul._ Latin _satallus,_ d'où l'ancien français _saoul._" Therefore Baudelaire was right, traditionally, in using the original form of the word. His worst trouble is in getting the famous dedication to Gautier printed and spaced as it had to be. It must be composed in a certain solemn style. Then he writes: "The magician has made me abbreviate the dedication; it must not be a profession of faith, which might have the fault of attracting people's eyes '_sur le côté scabreux du volume._'" As it is, strangely enough for him, Baudelaire made a mistake in syntax, using "_au magicien ès-langue française"_ instead of "_au parfait magicien ès-lettres françaises_," which he corrected in the edition of 1861.