Six months later Bertrand was dead. At least once he had known for several months the inside of a public hospital. He was attacked by phthisis. David d’Angers obtained a grant of 300 francs for him and the promise of a post as librarian; but he was not to leave the hospital again. David, who was himself ill, did all that could be done for him, sent him oranges, and made portraits of him before and after death, and saw to it that his grave-clothes were not of the coarseness deemed fitting for the bodies of the poor. David alone followed his bier, and, no doubt, supplied Sainte-Beuve with the material for his picture (in the introduction to the first edition of _Gaspard de la Nuit_, published in 1842 by Victor Pavie, who bought the rights from Renduel for the sum originally paid):--“It was the eve of Ascension; a terrible storm was rumbling; the Mass for the dead had been spoken, and the funeral procession did not come. The priest had ended by leaving; the only friend present watched the abandoned remains. At the end of the chapel a sister of charity was decorating an altar with garlands for the next day’s feast.” So ended a life that was like a thread blown in the wind, swung this way and that, without weight, and at last torn from its weak hold and whirled away over the edge of the world. Bertrand’s life was that of the real Bohemian, whose struggle is not the less difficult because his head is high and his eyes, instead of seeing where he is going, are full of magnificent things. Bertrand was like a man trying to speak high poetry when his enemy has him by the throat. He saw, and wrote, and wrestled, in a breath; his achievement was scarcely recognised till he was overthrown. And that achievement, such as it was, that little flame he contrived to light before going out himself, kindled a greater, and in its brighter luminosity almost became invisible. But when we look back from the _Petits Poèmes en Prose_ to this little book that suggested their creation, we find that it is not without an independent interest, personal as well as historical. Bertrand himself was somebody, and no book so well as his lets us share the day-dreams of 1830. 1911. ALPHONSE DAUDET ALPHONSE DAUDET