M. de Gourmont lives on the fourth floor of an old house in the Rue des Saints-Pères. A copper chain hangs as bell-rope to his door. The rare visitor, for it is well known that for many years he has been a solitary and seldom receives even his friends, pulls the chain and waits. The door opens a few inches, ready to be closed immediately, by a man of middle size, in a monk’s brown robe, with a small, round, grey felt cap. The robe is fastened with silver buckles, in which are set large blue stones. The admitted visitor walks through a passage into a room whose walls are covered with books. In the shadow at the back of the room is a loaded table. Another table, with a sloping desk upon it, juts out from the window. M. de Gourmont sits in a big chair before the desk, placing his visitor on the opposite side of the table, with the light falling on his face so that he can observe his slightest expression. In conversation he often disguises his face with his hand, but now and again looks openly and directly at his visitor. His eyes are always questioning, and almost always kindly. His face was beautiful in the youth of the flesh, and is now beautiful in the age of the mind, for there is no dead line in it, no wrinkle, no minute feature not vitalised by intellectual activity. The nose is full and sensitive, with markedly curved nostrils. There is a little satiric beard. The eyebrows lift towards the temples, as in most men of imagination. The eyes are weighted below, as in most men of critical thought. The two characteristics are, in M. de Gourmont, as in his work, most noticeable together. The lower lip, very full, does not pout, but falls curtain-like towards the chin. It is the lip of a sensualist, and yet of one whose sensuality has not clogged but stimulated the digestive processes of his brain. Omar might have had such a lip, if he had been capable not only of his garlands of roses, but also of the essays of Montaigne.