The continual alternation of antithetical moods in Verlaine--this uniform transition from bestial lust to an excess of piety, and from sinning to remorse--has struck even observers who do not know the significance of such a phenomenon. ‘He is,’ writes M. Anatole France,[128] ‘alternately devout and atheistical, orthodox and sacrilegious.’ These he certainly is. But why? Simply because he is a _circulaire_. This not very happy expression, invented by French psychiatry, denotes that form of mental disease in which states of excitement and depression follow each other in regular succession. The period of excitement coincides with the irresistible impulses to misdeeds and blasphemous language; that of dejection with the paroxysms of contrition and piety. The _circulaires_ belong to the worst species of the degenerate. ‘They are drunkards, obscene, vicious, and thievish.’[129] They are also in particular incapable of any lasting, uniform occupation, since it is obvious that in such a condition of mental depression they cannot accomplish any work which demands strength and attention. The _circulaires_ are, by the nature of their affliction, condemned to be vagabonds or thieves, unless they belong to rich families. In normally constituted society there is no place for them. Verlaine has been a vagabond the whole of his life. He has loafed about all the highways of France, and roamed as well through Belgium and England. Since his release from prison he has spent most of his time in Paris, where, however, he has no residence, but resorts to the hospitals under the pretext of rheumatism, which for that matter he may easily have contracted during the nights which, as a tramp, he has spent under the open sky. The administration winks at his doings, and grants him food and shelter gratis, out of regard for his poetical capacity. Conformably with the constant tendency of the human mind to beautify what cannot be altered, he persuades himself that his vagrancy, which was forced upon him by his organic vice, is a glorious and enviable condition; he prizes it as something beautiful, artistic, and sublime, and looks upon vagabonds with especial tenderness. Speaking of them he says (_Grotesques_): ‘Leur jambes pour toutes montures, Pour tous biens l’or de leurs regards, Par le chemin des aventures Ils vont haillonneux et hagards. ‘Le sage, indigné, les harangue; Le sot plaint ces fous hasardeux; Les enfants leur tirent la langue Et les filles se moquent d’eux.’ We find in every lunatic and imbecile the conviction that the rational minds who discern and judge him are ‘blockheads.’ ‘... Dans leurs prunelles Rit et pleure--fastidieux-- L’amour des choses éternelles, Des vieux morts et des anciens dieux! ‘Donc, allez, vagabonds sans trêves, Errez, funestes et maudits, Le long des gouffres et des grèves, Sous l’œil fermé des paradis!