If we demanded everything of the same poet, who would answer? The essential thing is to have a garden, to work there with the spade and sow seeds; the flowers that will shoot forth, carnations, peonies or violets, will have their value and their charm, according to the hour and the season. ADOLPH RETTÉ By its fecundity in poets, the day we live in and which has already lasted ten years, can hardly be compared with any of the vanished days, even those richest in sunshine and flowers. There were fair morning excursions in the dew, following the footsteps of Ronsard; there was a lovely afternoon when Theophile's weary viol sighed, heard between the oboes and the bass-trombones; there was the stormy romantic day, sombre and royal, interrupted towards evening by the cry of a woman whom Baudelaire was strangling; there was the Parnassian moonlight, and the Verlainian sun rose--and we are there in full noon, in the midst of a wide country provided with everything necessary for the making of verse: plants, flowers, streams, rivulets, woods, caves and young women so fresh that one would say their thoughts were newly hatched from an ingenuous brain. The wide country is quite full of poets who walk, no longer in troops as in Ronsard's time, but alone and with a slightly sullen air; they greet each other from afar with brief gestures. Not all have names and several of them never will have any. How shall we call them? Let them play on while this person overtakes us and tells us something of his dream. He is Adolphe Retté. He is recognizable among them all by his dissolute and almost wild appearance. He crushes the flowers, if he does not gather them, and with reeds he makes rafts, throwing them to the tide, towards peril, towards the morrow. But he smiles and grows languid when young girls pass. _Une belle dame passa_ ... and he spoke: Dame des lys amoureux et pâmés, Dames des lys languissants et fanés, Triste aux yeux de belladone-- Dame d'un rêve de roses royales, Dame des sombres roses nuptiales, Frêle comme une madone-- Dame de ciel et de ravissement, Dame d'extase et de renoncement, Chaste étoile très lointaine-- Dame d'enfer, ton sourire farouche, Dame du diable, un baiser de ta bouche, C'est le feu des mauvaises fontaines Et je brûle si je te touche. (Tr. 32) The fair lady passed, but without being affected by the final imprecation, which she doubtless attributed to excess of love. She passed, giving the poet smile for smile. This idyll had an admirable plaint for its first epilogue, Mon âme, il me semble que vous êtes un jardin ... (Tr. 33) a garden where one sees, hanging on the hedges, in the evening mist, shreds of the veil De la Dame qui est passée. (Tr. 34)