By the way, are there any books you'd like us to lend you? Thank you. That would be fine. What, for instance? Anything. Think of one you'd like especially. Oh, anything. I'm not particular. Only I suppose it would be hard to find any translations from the Greek? Here I offered to bring in a Homer in the original and stammer out an improvised translation. Oh, I should like that most of all, he cried. I know Chapman's well. I replied, unthinking, that Chapman's was scarcely Homer at all, and suddenly beheld a look of pain, as of a mortal wound, appear upon his face. To regain control of himself he bit his finger and tried to smile. I hastened to add that in its way it was very beautiful, but I could not recall my cruelty; his heart seemed to have commenced bleeding within him. Blair asked him if he had almost enough poems for a new book. I don't think about books any more, he said. I just write to please myself. But the insult to Chapman had been working in him; he now turned his face away and great tears fell upon his hands. Excuse me. Excuse me, he said. I'm not well, and I seem to ... to do this about nothing. There was a search for a handkerchief, but none being found he was persuaded to use mine. I don't want to go away without seeing Francis, said Blair. Do you know where I might find him? Yes, yes. He's around the corner at the Café Greco. I begged him to go and get some coffee; he'd been here all day. So Blair left me with the poet, who seemed to have forgiven me and was ready for the hazards of further conversation. Feeling it was better I did the talking, I began to discourse upon everything, on the fireworks, on the wildflowers of Lake Albano, on Pizzetti's sonata, on a theft in the Vatican library. His face showed dearly what matter pleased him; I experimented on it, and discovered that he was hungry for hearing things praised. He was beyond feeling indignant at abuses, beyond humor, beyond sentiment, beyond interest in any bits of antiquarian lore. Apparently for weeks together in the wretched atmosphere of the sick-room Francis had neglected to speak highly of anything and the poet wanted before he left the strange world to hear some portion of it praised. Oh, I laid it on. His eyes glowed and his hands trembled. Most of all he desired the praise of poetry. I launched upon a history of poetry, calling the singers by name, getting them wrong, assigning them to the wrong ages and languages, characterizing them with the worn epithets of an encyclopœdist, and drawing upon what anecdotage I could,--all bad, but somehow marshalling the glorious throng. I spoke of Sappho; of how a line of Euripides drove mad the citizens of Abdera; of Terence pleading with audiences to come to him rather than to the tight-rope walkers; of Villon writing his mother's prayers before the great picture-book of a cathedral wall; of Milton in his old age, holding a few olives in his hand to remind himself of his golden year in Italy.