Théophile Gautier is one of the few French Romanticists who present a distinct parallel to the German. His story _Fortunio_, with its glorification of pleasure and idleness, is the French counterpart of Friedrich Schlegel's _Lucinde_; and he recalls the German Romanticists by his contempt for the distinctively poetic in poetry. He once said to Taine, who was comparing De Musset with Victor Hugo to the disadvantage of the latter: "Taine, I verily believe you are degenerating into bourgeois imbecility. Sentiment in poetry ... that is not the main thing. Radiant, resplendent words, rhythm, and melody--these are poetry. Poetry proves nothing and tells nothing. Take the beginning of Hugo's _Ratbert_, for instance; there is no poetry in the world like that; it is the very summit of the Himalayas. All Italy with its medieval heraldry is there--and nothing but words." Gautier resembles Tieck in his love of the poetry of pure form, guiltless of ideas; but there is this marked difference between them, that whereas Tieck aimed at volatilising words into tones, at diluting poetry into simple mood, into music, Gautier, the good Latin, aimed at making words produce light and colour, at condensing poetry into word-painting, word-sculpture. He harmonised completely with the German Romanticists in his hatred of utilitarianism. His watchword, _L'art pour l'art_, was the outcome of this aversion. And, regarded from a certain standpoint, this principle of his, so eloquently propounded in the preface to _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, is absolutely incontestable.