The charming cantatrice reclines And rests a moment where she sees Her château’s roof that hotly shines Amid the dusky summer trees, And fans herself, half shuts her eyes, and smooths the frock about her knees. The gracious boy is at her feet, And weighs his courage with his chance; His fears soon melt in noonday heat. The tourist gives a furious glance, Red as his guide-book, moves on, and offers up a prayer for France. In _The Ballad of a Barber_, again, there is nothing but a trill of song in limpid verse. How Carrousel, the barber of Meridian Street, who could ‘curl wit into the dullest face,’ became _fou_ of the thirteen-year-old King’s daughter, so that His fingers lost their cunning quite, His ivory combs obeyed no more; is a typical ninety _jeu d’esprit_, only much better done than the average one. With the fewest words Beardsley can sketch a scene or character, as he used the fewest of lines in his drawings. This is even better exemplified in his prose. Time and again a single sentence of _Under the Hill_ gives us a complete picture: Sporion was a tall, depraved young man, with a slight stoop, a troubled walk, an oval, impassible face, with its olive skin drawn lightly over the bone, strong, scarlet lips, long Japanese eyes, and a great gilt toupet. We seem to gaze with the Abbé Fanfreluche at the prints on his bedroom wall: Within the delicate curved frames lived the corrupt and gracious creatures of Dorat and his school, slender children in masque and domino, smiling horribly, exquisite lechers leaning over the shoulders of smooth, doll-like girls, and doing nothing in particular, terrible little Pierrots posing as lady lovers and pointing at something outside the picture, and unearthly fops and huge, bird-like women mingling in some rococo room.