The Pilgrim of Silence! Pilgrim moving, aloof from the clamours of men, from garden to garden of melancholy and sweet mystery; pilgrim passing night by night along moon-lit parterres of impossible roses; pilgrim seeking "wild sea-banks" where strange-leaved glaucous plants whisper their secrets to the sharp salt wind; pilgrim of silence, for whom the gentlest murmur of the troubled senses of feverish humanity has its absorbing interest, every quiver of those burning eyelids its secret intimation, every sigh of that tremulous breast its burden of delicate confession; pilgrim of silence moving aloof from the howls of the mob and the raucous voices of the preachers, moving from garden to garden, from sea-shore to sea-shore; cannot even you--oh pilgrim of the long, long quest--give us the word, the clue, the signal, that shall answer the riddle of our days, and make the twilight of our destiny roll back? Pilgrim of silence, have you only silence to offer us at the last, after all your litanies to all the gods living and dead? Is silence your last word too? Thus we can imagine Simone, the tender companion of our wanderer, questioning him as they walk together over the dead memories of all the generations. Ah yes! Simone may question her pilgrim--her pilgrim of silence --even as, in his own "Nuit au Luxembourg," the youth to whom our Lord discoursed so strangely, questioned the Master as to the ultimate mystery and received so ambiguous a response. And Simone likewise shall receive her answer, as we all--whether we be descendants of the Puritans, crossing Boston Common, or aliens of the sweat-shops of New York, crossing Washington Square, or unemployed in Hyde Park, or nursery-maids in the Jardin des Plantes--shall receive ours, as we walk over the dead leaves of the centuries. Simone, aimes-tu le bruit des pas sur les feuilles mortes? Quand le pied les écrase, elles pleurent comme des âmes, Elle font un bruit d'ailes ou de robes de femme. Simone, aimes-tu le bruit des pas sur les feuilles mortes? Viens; nous serons un jour de pauvres feuilles mortes. Viens; déjà la nuit tombe et le vent nous emporte. Simone, aimes-tu le bruit des pas sur les feuilles mortes? "Le bruit des pas sur les feuilles mortes"--such indeed must be, at the last, the wisdom of this great harvester of human passions and perversions. "Feuilles mortes," and the sound of feet that go by; that go by and return not again! Remy de Gourmont leaves in us a bitter after-sense that we have not altogether, or perhaps even nearly, sounded the stops of his mystery. "The rest is silence" not only because he is dead, but because it seems as if he mocked at us--he the Protean critic--until his last hour. His remote epicurean life--the life of a passionate scholar of the Renaissance--baffles and evades our curiosity. To analyse Remy de Gourmont one would have to be a Remy de Gourmont.