The poet read another poem. It was something about topazes and serpents and the twilight and the pink palms of a negress. More I could not gather. The company hailed it as another masterpiece. Félicien Garbure called it a supreme effort of genius. A young man beside Paragot vaunted its witchery of suggestion. "It is absolute nonsense," cried my master. "But it is symbolism, Monsieur," replied the young man in a tone of indulgent pity. "What does it mean?" The young man--he was very kind--smiled and shrugged his shoulders politely. "What in common speech is the meaning of one of Bach's fugues or Claude Monet's effects of sunlight? One cannot say. They appeal direct to the soul. So does a subtle harmony of words, using words as notes of music, or pigments, what you will, arranged by the magic of a master. These things are transcendental, Monsieur." "_Saperlipopette!_" breathed Paragot. "My little Asticot," he whispered to me, "have I really come to this, to sit at the feet of an acting pro-sub-vice-deputy infant Gamaliel and be taught the elements of symbolic poetry?" "But Master," said I, somewhat captivated by the balderdash, "there is, after all, colour in words. Don't you remember how delighted you were with the name of a little town we passed through on our way to Orléans--Romorantin? You were haunted by it and said it was like the purple note of an organ." "Which shews you my son that I was aware of the jargon of symbolism before these goslings were hatched," he replied. He drained his tumbler, called the waiter and paid the reckoning. "Let us go to Père Louviot's in the Halles where we can meet some real men and women." We went, and the Café Delphine knew Paragot no more. * * * * * After this he took to frequenting indiscriminately the various cafés of the neighbourhood, wandering from one to the other like a lost soul seeking a habitation. Now and again he hit upon fragments of the old band, who had migrated from the Café Delphine when it became the home of the symbolic poets. He tried in vain to collect the fragments together in a new hostelry. But the cohesive force had gone. These queer circles of the Latin Quarter are organisms of spontaneous growth. You cannot create them artificially or re-create them when once they are disintegrated. The twos and threes of students received him kindly and listened to his talk; but his authority was gone. Once or twice when I accompanied him I fancied that he had lost also the peculiar magic of his vehement utterances. Cazalet also noticed a change. "What is the matter with Paragot? He no longer talks. He preaches. _Ça ennuie à la fin._" Paragot a bore! It was unimaginable.