and Verlaine likes these things; they inspire him to write, he feels that belief in the Church is part of himself, and his poetical genius is to tell his own story; he is one of the great soul-tellers. From a literary point of view there is a good deal to be said in favour of faith when it is not joined with practice; acceptation of dogma shields one from controversy; it allows Verlaine to concentrate himself entirely upon things; it weans him away from ideas--the curse of modern literature--and makes him a sort of divine vagrant living his life in the tavern and in the hospital. It is only those who have freed themselves from all prejudice that get close to life, who get the real taste of life--the aroma as from a wine that has been many years in bottle. And Verlaine is aware that this is so. Sometimes he thinks he might have written a little more poetry, and he sighs, but he quickly recovers. 'After all, I have written a good many volumes.' 'And what would art be without life, without love?' He has a verse on that subject; I wish I could remember it for you. His verse is always so winsome, so delicate, slender as the birch tree, elegiac like it; a birch bending over a lake's edge reminds me of Verlaine. He is a lake poet, but the lake is in a suburb not far from a casino. What makes me speak about the lake is that for a long time I thought these verses, Ton âme est un lac d'amour Dont mes pensêes sont les cygnes. Vois comme ils font le tour.... were Verlaine's, but they are much less original; their beauty, for they are beautiful, is conventional; numbers of poets might have written them, whereas nobody but Verlaine could have written any of his, really his own, poetry. His desires go sometimes as high as the crucifix; very often they are in the gutter, hardly poetry at all, having hardly any beauty except that of truth, and of course the beauty of a versification that haunts in his ear, for he hears a song in French verse that no French poet has ever heard before, and a song so fluent, ranging from the ecstasy of the nightingale to the robin's little homily. Oui, c'était par un soir joyeux de cabaret, Un de ces soirs plutôt trop chauds où l'on dirait Que le gaz du plafond conspire à notre perte Avec le vin du zinc, saveur naïve et verte. On s'amusait beaucoup dans la boutique et on Entendait des soupirs voisins d'accordéon Que ponctuaient des pieds frappant presque en cadence. Quand la porte s'ouvrit de la salle de danse Vomissant tout un flot dont toi, vers où j'étais, Et de ta voix fait que soudain je me tais, S'il te plaît de me donner un ordre péremptoire. Tu t'écrias 'Dieu, qu'il fait chaud! Patron, à boire!' "She was from Picardy; and he tells of her horrible accent, and in elegy number five he continues the confession, telling how his well beloved used to get drunk. "Tu fis le saut de ... Seine et, depuis morte-vive, Tu gardes le vertige et le goût du néant."