“And the cricket had fallen asleep, as soon as the last spark had put out its last glimmer in the ashes of the fire-place. “And, as for me, it seemed to me--fever is so incoherent--that the moon, wrinkling her face, put out her tongue at me like a man who has been hanged.” The moon put out her tongue at her faithful admirer, and helped him neither to honey-dew nor to the milk of Paradise. His biographers do not agree as to the way he lived during his few remaining years. Sainte-Beuve says that he was a private secretary, and that he wrote in various inconspicuous newspapers. M. Séché, to whom we owe a great deal of new information, thinks that these employments are not likely to have held Bertrand for long. About 1835, he found in Eugène Renduel a publisher for _Gaspard de la Nuit_. He sold the right to print an edition of 800 copies, of which 300 were to be called “Keepsake Fantastique,” for the sum of 150 francs. The money was paid and the manuscript was put into the publisher’s desk, where, for some reason or other, it remained for a very long time. Its publication was promised from year to year. In a letter written to David d’Angers, in 1837, Bertrand says: “_Gaspard de la Nuit_, ce livre de mes douces prédilections, où j’ai essayé de créer un nouveau genre de prose, attend le bon vouloir d’Eugène Renduel pour paraître enfin cet automne....” Bertrand did not make the gallant figure in poverty that was made, for example, by Richard Steele, who turned bailiffs into liveried footmen, as Whistler is said to have done more recently; but once, at least, he showed a smiling face to misfortune, even if the smile was a little awry. In 1840, the book being still unpublished, he called on his publisher and left a sonnet on him, as an ordinary person might leave a visiting-card. A more charming protest against procrastination was surely never written: “Quand le raisin est mûr, par un ciel clair et doux, Dès l’aube, à mi-coteau rit une foule étrange: C’est qu’alors dans la vigne, et non plus dans la grange, Maîtres et serviteurs, joyeux, s’assemblent tous. A votre huis, clos encor, je heurte. Dormez vous? Le matin vous éveille, éveillant sa voix d’ange, Mon compère, chacun en ce temps-ci vendange; Nous avons une vigne--eh bien, vendangeons nous! Mon livre est cette vigne, où, présent de l’automne, La grappe d’or attend pour couler dans la tonne, Que le pressoir noueux crie enfin avec bruit. J’invite mes voisins, convoqués sans trompettes, A s’armer promptement de paniers, de serpettes. Qu’ils tournent le feuillet; sous le pampre est le fruit.”