And the old maid stretched out her trembling hand
in a despairing gesture. Then she blew her nose
several times, wiped her eyes and continued:
“I broke off my marriage—without
saying why. And I—I always have remained
the—the widow of this thirteen-year-old
boy.” Then her head fell on her breast
and she wept for a long time.
As the guests were retiring for the night a large
man, whose quiet she had disturbed, whispered in his
neighbor’s ear: “Isn’t it unfortunate
to, be so sentimental?”
A great English poet has just crossed over to France
in order to greet Victor Hugo. All the newspapers
are full of his name and he is the great topic of
conversation in all drawing-rooms. Fifteen years
ago I had occasion several times to meet Algernon
Charles Swinburne. I will attempt to show him
just as I saw him and to give an idea of the strange
impression he made on me, which will remain with me
throughout time.
I believe it was in 1867 or in 1868 that an unknown
young Englishman came to Etretat and bought a little
but hidden under great trees. It was said that
he lived there, always alone, in a strange manner;
and he aroused the inimical surprise of the natives,
for the inhabitants were sullen and foolishly malicious,
as they always are in little towns.
They declared that this whimsical Englishman ate nothing
but boiled. roasted or stewed monkey; that he would
see no one; that he talked to himself hours at a time
and many other surprising things that made people
think that he was different from other men. They
were surprised that he should live alone with a monkey.
Had it been a cat or a dog they would have said nothing.
But a monkey! Was that not frightful? What
savage tastes the man must have!
I knew this young man only from seeing him in the
streets. He was short, plump, without being fat,
mild-looking, and he wore a little blond mustache,
which was almost invisible.
Chance brought us together. This savage had amiable
and pleasing manners, but he was one of those strange
Englishmen that one meets here and there throughout
the world.
Endowed with remarkable intelligence, he seemed to
live in a fantastic dream, as Edgar Poe must have
lived. He had translated into English a volume
of strange Icelandic legends, which I ardently desired
to see translated into French. He loved the supernatural,
the dismal and grewsome, but he spoke of the most
marvellous things with a calmness that was typically
English, to which his gentle and quiet voice gave a
semblance of reality that was maddening.
Full of a haughty disdain for the world, with its
conventions, prejudices and code of morality, he had
nailed to his house a name that was boldly impudent.
The keeper of a lonely inn who should write on his
door: “Travellers murdered here!”
could not make a more sinister jest. I never
had entered his dwelling, when one day I received an
invitation to luncheon, following an accident that
had occurred to one of his friends, who had been almost
drowned and whom I had attempted to rescue.
