carry away from the medieval stage-property room, but it was drawn from life with all seriousness and sincerity. The poem opens by depicting them all seated round the punch-bowl--punch, it must be stated, was the only really respectable drink for a thorough-paced Romantic. He mixed it in a large bowl and set light to the fumes, as the students are supposed to do in the first act of the "Contes d'Hoffmann," and derived enormous satisfaction from sitting in an obscurity only lit by this bluish flame. Thus to recall the witches' cauldron and the fires of the Inferno had an unfailing success as a stimulant to eloquence. The scene, then, opens thus powerfully: _Au centre de la salle, autour d'une urne en fer,_ _Digne émule en largeur des coupes d'enfer,_ _Dans laquelle un beau punch, aux prismatiques flammes,_ _Semble un lac sulfureux qui fait houler ses lames,_ _Vingt jeunes hommes, tous artistes dans le cœur,_ _La pipe ou le cigare aux lèvres, l'œil moqueur,_ _Le temporal orné du bonnet de Phrygie,_ _En barbe Jeune-France, en costume d'orgie,_ _Sont pachalesquement jetés sur un amas_ _De coussins dont maint siècle a troué le damas,_ _Et le sombre atelier n'a point d'éclairage_ _Que la gerbe du punch, spiritueux mirage._ Smoking, it would be well to add, was considered part of the whole duty of a Romantic man. The cigar, being Byronic, was affected by the "fatally" inclined; the pipe came, not from England, but from Germany; it was Faust-like, Hoffmannesque; it was also Flemish, of course, and the Flemish painters, like Steen and Teniers, were in high repute. A pipe signified a more jolly potatory spirit than a cigar, but it was always possible for the irreconcilable satanics to regard the breathing out of smoke from either as symbolically demoniac. The cigarette was not despised, but its popularity was due also to its picturesque associations. Spain was the home of the cigarette, the _papelito_ as Borel and his friends fondly called it. When they rolled their fragrant Maryland lovingly in the _papel_ they assumed a Spanish _allure_, Granada rose before their eyes, and invisible guitars played "Avez-vous vu dans Barcelone?" However, cigarettes would have been out of place in the prismatic flames of the punch-bowl. Their Spanish nonchalance suited better the light of day: evening shadows were consecrated to gloom and frenzy, Northern spirits. Hence it is not surprising to hear that all the company had _De haine virulente et de pitié morose_ _Contre la bourgeoisie et le Code et la prose;_ _Des cœurs ne dépensant leur exultation_ _Que pour deux vérités, l'art et la passion!_