Having written this and _Vitraux_, poems which a disdainful mysticism oddly seasons, and that _Terre latine_, prose of such affecting beauty, perfect and unique pages of an almost sorrowful purity of style, Tailhade suddenly made himself famed and feared by the cruel and excessive satires which he called, as a souvenir and witness of a voyage we all make without profit, _Au pays du Mufle_. The ignominy of the age exasperates the Latin, charmed with sunshine and perfumes, lovely phrases and comely gestures, and for whom money is the joy we throw, like flowers, under the steps of women and not the productive seed which we bury that it may sprout. There he reveals himself the haughty executioner of hypocricies and greeds, of false glories and real turpitudes, of money and success, of the parvenu of the Bourse and the parvenu of _the feuilleton._ Harshly and even unjustly he lashes his own aversions. For him, as for all the satirists, the particular enemy becomes the public enemy, but what beautiful language at once traditional and new, and what grand insolence! Ce que j'écris n'est pas pour ces charognes! No more are Tailhade's ballads destined to make dream the handsome ladies who fan themselves with peacock plumes. It is difficult to quote even one of the verses. This one is not very bad: Bourget, Maupassant et Loti, Se trouvent dans toutes les gares On les offre avec le rôti, Bourget, Maupassant et Loti. De ces auteurs soyez loti En même temps que de cigares: Bourget, Maupassant et Loti Se trouvent dans toutes les gares. (Tr. 36) The _Quatorzain d'Été_ can be given in full and it is even good to know it by heart, for it is a marvel of subtlety and a little genre picture to care for and preserve. The epigraph, that verse of Rimbaud, in the _Premières Communions_, Elle fait la victime et la petite épouse, (Tr. 37) gives the tone of the frame: Certes, monsieur Benoist approuve les gens qui Ont lu Voltaire et sont aux Jésuites adverses. Il pense. Il est idoine aux longues controverses, Il adsperne le moine et le thériaki. Même il fut orateur d'une loge écossaise. Toutefois--car sa légitime croit en Dieu-- La Petite Benoist, voiles blancs, ruban bleu, Communia. Ca fait qu'on boit maint litre à seize. Chez le bistro, parmi les bancs empouacrés, Le billard somnolent et les garçons vautrés, Rougit la pucelette aux gants de filoselle. Or, Benoist, qui s'émèche et tourne au calotin, Montre quelque plaisir d'avoir vu, ce matin. L'hymen du Fils unique et de sa demoiselle. (Tr. 38)