“La Princesse Maleine,” which also appeared in 1889, had been first privately printed by the author himself, on a hand press. With it Maeterlinck was launched into the fierce light of fame. Octave Mirbeau wrote of it in the _Figaro_ of Paris. He said that no one could be more unknown than the author, but that his book was a masterpiece, “comparable—shall I dare say it? superior in beauty to the most beautiful in Shakespeare.” There were less generous critics who suggested that the play was Shakespeare, because it had been made with scraps of Shakespeare. A champion of Maeterlinck retorted that in comparison with Maleine and Hjalmar the characters of Shakespeare were marionettes. So the storm raged, to the author’s infinite disgust. Finally in a spirit of modesty and frank acknowledgment he called the play “Shakespearterie.” There was no pose in that assumption of humility. From all testimony he has ever been the same. Invited to a dinner his acceptance has been conditional on absolute simplicity. “After all, I am a peasant.” It was Gerard Harry who quoted that. Again, at the end of a first night of one of his plays, he has been described as “modest, simple, altogether without display in dress or manner.” His gestures were gentle with reflection, his voice low and rarely heard. He had no pride of success, but an air at once uneasy and detached, as if tired of being there. His deep blue eye was cold and mournful, like a mirror that retains the images of indefinite and impalpable things, as Barbey d’Aurevilly says the eyes always are of those who look more within than without. His brow was deep and square and shone pale. He made the observer think of his own untranslatable words: Sous l’eau du songe qui s’élève Mon âme a peur, mon âme a peur. The same writer says that, by way of contrast, the playwright keeps bees and teaches a dog to sing; he calls him a sportsman, a man always getting about, a great drinker of ale—a great boy, a Bohemian. Here also may be discerned the writer in praise of the sword, the fist, and the automobile, the friend of the bull-dog and the creator of Tylo. That was describing the Maeterlinck of the early days. He seems never to have greatly changed. Was not almost the last picture of him that we had before the outbreak of the Great War one of poet playing with pugilist at the manly art of self-defense—the author of “L’Oiseau Bleu” sparring and wrestling daily with the French champion Carpentier?