Baudelaire, Gautier writes, was born in the Rue Hautefeuille, in one of those old houses with a pepper-pot turret at the corner which have disappeared from the city under the advancing improvement of straight lines and clear openings. His father, a gentleman of learning, retained all the eighteenth-century courtesy and distinction of manner, which, like the pepper-pot turret, has also disappeared under the advance of Republican enlightenment. An absent-minded, reserved child, Baudelaire attracted no especial attention during his school days. When they were over, his predilection for a literary vocation became known. From this his parents sought to divert him by sending him to travel. He voyaged through the Indian Ocean, visiting the great islands: Madagascar, Ceylon, Mauritius, Bourbon. Had there been a chance for irresolution in the mind of the youth, this voyage destroyed it forever. His imagination, essentially exotic, succumbed to the passionate charm of a new, strange, and splendidly glowing form of nature; the stars, the skies, the gigantic vegetation, the color, the perfumes, the dark-skinned figures in white draperies, formed for him at that time a heaven, for which his senses unceasingly yearned afterwards amid the charms and enchantments of civilization, in the world's capital of pleasure and luxury. Returning to Paris, of age and master of his fortune, he established himself in his independence, openly adopting his chosen career. He and Théophile Gautier met for the first time in 1849, in the Hotel Pimodau, where were held the meetings of the Hashish Club. Here in the great Louis XIV. saloon, with its wood-work relieved with dull gold; its corbeled ceiling, painted after the manner of Lesueur and Poussin, with satyrs pursuing nymphs through reeds and foliage; its great red and white spotted marble mantel, with gilded elephant harnessed like the elephant of Porus in Lebrun's picture, bearing an enameled clock with blue ciphers; its antique chairs and sofas, covered with faded tapestry representing hunting scenes, holding the reclining figures of the members of the club; women celebrated in the world of beauty, men in the world of letters, meeting not only for the enjoyment of the artificial ecstasies of the drug, but to talk of art, literature, and love, as in the days of the Decameron--here Baudelaire made what might be called his historic impression upon literature. He was at that time twenty-eight years of age; and even in that assemblage, in those surroundings, his personality was striking. His black hair, worn close to the head, grew in regular scallops over a forehead of dazzling whiteness; his eyes, the color of Spanish tobacco, were spiritual, deep, penetrating, perhaps too insistently so, in expression; the mobile sinuous mouth had the ironical voluptuous lips that Leonardo da Vinci loved to paint; the nose was delicate and sensitive, with quivering nostrils; a deep dimple