Ment-elle, ma vision chaste, D'affinité spirituelle, De complicité maternelle, D'affection étroite et vaste? . . . . That collection of passionate cries to God which ends with a sort of rhapsody of pleading prayer, entitled "Sagesse," begins--and one does not feel that it is in the least inappropriate--with Beauté des femmes, leur faiblesse, et ces mains pâles Qui font souvent le bien et peuvent tout le mal. It is very curious to note the subtle manner in which, for all his declarations about the Middle Ages, he is attracted irresistibly to that wonderful artificial fairy-land, associated for us for all time with the genius of Watteau, wherein pale roses and fountains and yew-hedges are the background for the fatal sweetness of Columbine and the dancing feet of Arlequino. This Garden-of-Versailles cult, with its cold moonlight and its faint music has become, with the sad-gay Pierrot as its tutelary deity, one of the most appealing "motifs" in modern art. Almost all of us have worshipped, at some time or another, at this wistful fairy shrine, and have laid our single white rose on its marble pavement, under the dark trees. Yes; Verlaine may boast of his faithful loyalty to the "haute théologie et solide morale, guidé par la folie unique de la Croix" of that "Moyen Age énorme et délicat" which inspires his spirit. The fact remains that none--none among all the most infatuated frequenters of the perverse fairy-land of Watteau's exquisite dreams--gives himself up more wantonly to the artifice within artifice, to themask below mask, of these dancers to tambourines amid the "boulingrins du pare aulique" of mock-classic fantasies. He gives himself up to this Watteau cult all the more easily because he himself has so infantile a heart. He is like a child who enters some elaborate masked ball in his own gala dress. It is natural to him to be perverse and wistful and tragically gay. It is natural to him to foot it in the moonlight along with the Marquis of Carabas. That Nuit du Walpurgis classique of his, with its "jardin de Lenôtre, correct, ridicule et charmant," is one of the most delicate evocations of this _genre._ One sees these strange figures, "ces spectres agités," as if they were passing from twilight to twilight through the silvery mists of some pale Corot-picture, passing into thin air, into the shadow of a shadow, into the dream of a dream, into nothingness and oblivion; but passing gaily and wantonly--to the music of mandolines, to the blowing of fairy horns! N'importe! ils vont toujours, les fébriles fantômes, Menant leur ronde vaste et morne, et tressautant Comme dans un rayon de soleil des atomes, Et s'évaporent a l'instant Humide et blême où l'aube éteint l'un après l'autre Les cors, en sorte qu'il ne reste absolument Plus rien--absolument--qu'un jardin de Lenôtre Correct, ridicule et charmant.