Aleister Crowley "Absinthe: The Green Goddess"

Absinthe: The Green Goddess (1918): Aleister Crowley Keep always this dim corner for me, that I may sit while the Green Hour glides, a proud pavine of Time. For I am no longer in the city accursed, where Time is horsed on the white gelding Death, his spurs rusted with blood. There is a corner of the United States which he has overlooked. It lies in New Orleans, between Canal Street and Esplanade Avenue; the Mississippi for its base. Thence it reaches northward to a most curious desert land, where is a cemetery lovely beyond dreams. Its walls low and whitewashed, within which straggles a wilderness of strange and fantastic tombs; and hard by is that great city of brothels which is so cynically mirthful a neighbor. As Felicien Rops wrote, — or was it Edmond d’Haraucourt? — “la Prostitution et la Mort sont frere et soeur — les fils de Dieu!” At least the poet of Le Legende des Sexes was right, and the psycho-analysts after him, in identifying the Mother with the Tomb. This, then, is only the beginning and end of things, this “quartier macabre” beyond the North Rampart with the Mississippi on the other side. It is like the space between, our life which flows, and fertilizes as it flows, muddy and malarious as it may be, to empty itself into the warm bosom of the Gulf Stream, which (in our allegory) we may call the Life of God. But our business is with the heart of things; we must go beyond the crude phenomena of nature if we are to dwell in the spirit. Art is the soul of life and the Old Absinthe House is heart and soul of the old quarter of New Orleans. For here was the headquarters of no common man — no less than a real pirate — of Captain Lafitte, who not only robbed his neighbors, but defended them against invasion. Here, too, sat Henry Clay, who lived and died to give his name to a cigar. Outside this house no man remembers much more of him than that; but here, authentic and, as I imagine, indignant, his ghost stalks grimly. Here, too are marble basins hollowed — and hallowed! — by the drippings of the water which creates by baptism the new spirit of absinthe. I am only sipping the second glass of that “fascinating, but subtle poison, whose ravages eat men’s heart and brain” that I have ever tasted in my life; and as I am not an American anxious for quick action, I am not surprised and disappointed that I do not drop dead upon the spot. But I can taste souls without the aid of absinthe; and besides, this is magic of absinthe! The spirit of the house has entered into it; it is an elixir, the masterpiece of an old alchemist, no common wine. And so, as I talk with the patron concerning the vanity of things, I perceive the secret of the heart of God himself; this, that everything, even the vilest thing, is so unutterably lovely that it is worthy of the devotion of a God for all eternity. What other excuse could He give man for making him? In substance, that is my answer to King Solomon. II The barrier between divine and human things is frail but inviolable; the artist and the bourgeois are only divided by a point of view — “A hair divided the false and true.” I am watching the opalescence of my absinthe, and it leads me to ponder upon a certain very curious mystery, persistent in legend. We may call it the mystery of the rainbow. Originally in the fantastic but significant legend of the Hebrews, the rainbow is mentioned as the sign of salvation. The world has been purified by water, and was ready for the revelation of Wine. God would never again destroy His work, but ultimately seal its perfection by a baptism of fire. Now, in this analogue also falls the coat of many colors which was made for Joseph, a legend which was regarded as so important that it was subsequently borrowed for the romance of Jesus. The veil of the Temple, too, was of many colors. We find, further east, that the Manipura Cakkra — the Lotus of the City of Jewels — which is an important centre in Hindu anatomy, and apparently identical with the solar plexus, is the central point of the nervous system of the human body, dividing the sacred from the profane, or the lower from the higher. In western Mysticism, once more we learn that the middle grade initiation is called Hodos Camelioniis, the Path of the Chameleon. There is here evidently an allusion to this same mystery. We also learn that the middle stage in Alchemy is when the liquor becomes opalescent. Finally, we note among the visions of the Saints one called the Universal Peacock, in which the totality is perceived thus royally appareled. Would it were possible to assemble in this place the cohorts of quotation; for indeed they are beautiful with banners, flashing their myriad rays from cothurn and habergeon, gay and gallant in the light of that Sun which knows no fall from Zenith of high noon! Yet I must needs already have written so much to make clear one pitiful conceit: can it be that in the opalescence of absinthe is some occult link with this mystery of the Rainbow? For undoubtedly one does indefinably and subtly insinuate the drinker in the secret chamber of Beauty, does kindle his thoughts to rapture, adjust his point of view to that of the artists, at least to that degree of which he is originally capable, weave for his fancy a gala dress of stuff as many-colored as the mind of Aphrodite. Oh Beauty! Long did I love thee, long did I pursue thee, thee elusive, thee intangible! And lo! thou enfoldest me by night and day in the arms of gracious, of luxurious, of shimmering silence. III The Prohibitionist must always be a person of no moral character; for he cannot even conceive of the possibility of a man capable of resisting temptation. Still more, he is so obsessed, like the savage, by the fear of the unknown, that he regards alcohol as a fetish, necessarily alluring and tyrannical. With this ignorance of human nature goes an ever grosser ignorance of the divine nature. He does not understand that the universe has only one possible purpose; that, the business of life being happily completed by the production of the necessities and luxuries incidental to comfort, the residuum of human energy needs an outlet. The surplus of Will must find issue in the elevation of the individual towards the Godhead; and the method of such elevation is by religion, love, and art. These three things are indissolubly bound up with wine, for they are species of intoxication. Yet against all these things we find the prohibitionist, logically enough. It is true that he usually pretends to admit religion as a proper pursuit for humanity; but what a religion! He has removed from it every element of ecstasy or even of devotion; in his hands it has become cold, fanatical, cruel, and stupid, a thing merciless and formal, without sympathy or humanity. Love and art he rejects altogether; for him the only meaning of love is a mechanical — hardly even physiological! — process necessary for the perpetuation of the human race. (But why perpetuate it?) Art is for him the parasite and pimp of love. He cannot distinguish between the Apollo Belvedere and the crude bestialities of certain Pompeian frescoes, or between Rabelais and Elenor Glyn. What then is his ideal of human life? one cannot say. So crass a creature can have no true ideal. There have been ascetic philosophers; but the prohibitionist would be as offended by their doctrine as by ours, which, indeed, are not so dissimilar as appears. Wage-slavery and boredom seem to complete his outlook on the world. There are species which survive because of the feeling of disgust inspired by them: one is reluctant to set the heel firmly upon them, however thick may be one’s boots. But when they are recognized as utterly noxious to humanity — the more so that they ape its form — then courage must be found, or, rather, nausea must be swallowed. May God send us a Saint George! IV It is notorious that all genius is accompanied by vice. Almost always this takes the form of sexual extravagance. It is to be observed that deficiency, as in the cases of Carlyle and Ruskin, is to be reckoned as extravagance. At least the word abnormalcy will fit all cases. Farther, we see that in a very large number of great men there has also been indulgence in drink or drugs. There are whole periods when practically every great man has been thus marked, and these periods are those during which the heroic spirit has died out of their nation, and the bourgeois is apparently triumphant. In this case the cause is evidently the horror of life induced in the artist by the contemplation of his surroundings. He must find another world, no matter at what cost. Consider the end of the eighteenth century. In France the men of genius are made, so to speak, possible, by the Revolution. In England, under Castlereagh, we find Blake lost to humanity in mysticism, Shelley and Byron exiles, Coleridge taking refuge in opium, Keats sinking under the weight of circumstance, Wordsworth forced to sell his soul, while the enemy, in the persons of Southey and Moore, triumphantly holds sway. The poetically similar period in France is 1850 to 1870. Hugo is in exile, and all his brethren are given to absinthe or to hashish or to opium. There is however another consideration more important. There are some men who possess the understanding of the City of God, and know not the keys; or, if they possess them, have not force to turn them in the wards. Such men often seek to win heaven by forged credentials. Just so a youth who desires love is too often deceived by simulacra, embraces Lydia thinking her to be Lalage. But the greatest men of all suffer neither the limitations of the former class nor the illusions of the latter. Yet we find them equally given to what is apparently indulgence. Lombroso has foolishly sought to find the source of this in madness — as if insanity could scale the peaks of Progress while Reason recoiled from the bergschrund. The explanation is far otherwise. Imagine to yourself the mental state of him who inherits or attains the full consciousness of the artist, that is to say, the divine consciousness. He finds himself unutterably lonely, and he must steel himself to endure it. All his peers are dead long since! Even if he find an equal upon earth, there can scarcely be companionship, hardly more than the far courtesy of king to king. There are no twin souls in genius. Good — he can reconcile himself to the scorn of the world. But yet he feels with anguish his duty towards it. It is therefore essential to him to be human. Now the divine consciousness is not full flowered in youth. The newness of the objective world preoccupies the soul for many years. It is only as each illusion vanishes before the magic of the master that he gains more and more the power to dwell in the world of Reality. And with this comes the terrible temptation — the desire to enter and enjoy rather than remain among men and suffer their illusions. Yet, since the sole purpose of the incarnation of such a Master was to help humanity, they must make the supreme renunciation. It is the problem of the dreadful bridge of Islam, Al Sirak — the razor-edge will cut the unwary foot, yet it must be trodden firmly, or the traveler will fall to the abyss. I dare not sit in the Old Absinthe House forever, wrapped in the ineffable delight of the Beatific Vision. I must write this essay, that men may thereby come at last to understand true things. But the operation of the creative godhead is not enough. Art is itself too near the reality which must be renounced for a season. Therefore his work is also part of his temptation; the genius feels himself slipping constantly heavenward. The gravitation of eternity draws him. He is like a ship torn by the tempest from the harbor where the master must needs take on new passengers to the Happy Isles. So he must throw out anchors and the only holding is the mire! Thus in order to maintain the equilibrium of sanity, the artist is obliged to seek fellowship with the grossest of mankind. Like Lord Dunsany or Augustus John, today, or like Teniers of old, he may love to sit in taverns where sailors frequent; or he may wander the country with Gypsies, or he may form liaisons with the vilest men and women. Edward Fitzgerald would see an illiterate fisherman and spend weeks in his company. Verlaine made associates of Rimbaud and Bibi la Puree. Shakespeare consorted with the Earls of Pembroke and Southampton. Marlowe was actually killed during a brawl in a low tavern. And when we consider the sex-relation, it is hard to mention a genius who had a wife or mistress of even tolerable good character. If he had one, he would be sure to neglect her for a Vampire or a Shrew. A good woman is too near that heaven of Reality which he is sworn to renounce! And this, I suppose, is why I am interested in the woman who has come to sit at the nearest table. Let us find out her story; let us try to see with the eyes of her soul! V She is a woman of no more than thirty years of age, though she looks older. She comes here at irregular intervals, once a week or once a month, but when she comes she sits down to get solidly drunk on that alternation of beer and gin which the best authorities in England deem so efficacious. As to her story, it is simplicity itself. She was kept in luxury for some years by a wealthy cotton broker, crossed to Europe with him, and lived in London and Paris like a Queen. Then she got the idea of “respectability” and “settling down in life”; so she married a man who could keep her in mere comfort. Result: repentance, and a periodical need to forget her sorrows. She is still “respectable”; she never tires of repeating that she is not one of “those girls” but “a married woman living far uptown,” and that she “never runs about with men.” It is not the failure of marriage; it is the failure of men to recognize what marriage was ordained to be. By a singular paradox it is the triumph of the bourgeois. Only the hero is capable of marriage as the church understands it; for the marriage oath is a compact of appalling solemnity, an alliance of two souls against the world and against fate, with invocation of the great blessing of the Most High. Death is not the most beautiful of adventures, as Frohman said, for death is unavoidable; marriage is a voluntary heroism. That marriage has today become a matter of convenience is the last word of the commercial spirit. It is as if one should take a vow of knighthood to combat dragons — until the dragons appeared. So this poor woman, because she did not understand that respectability is a lie, that it is love that makes marriage sacred and not the sanction of church or state, because she took marriage as an asylum instead of as a crusade, has failed in life, and now seeks alcohol under the same fatal error. Wine is the ripe gladness which accompanies valor and rewards toil; it is the plume on a man’s lancehead, a fluttering gallantry — not good to lean upon. Therefore her eyes are glassed with horror as she gazes uncomprehending upon her fate. That which she did all to avoid confronts her: she does not realize that, had she faced it, it would have fled with all the other phantoms. For the sole reality of this universe is God. The Old Absinthe House is not a place. It is not bounded by four walls. It is headquarters to an army of philosophies. From this dim corner let me range, wafting thought through every air, salient against every problem of mankind: for it will always return like Noah’s dove to this ark, this strange little sanctuary of the Green Goddess which has been set down not upon Ararat, but by the banks of the “Father of Waters.” VI Ah! the Green Goddess! What is the fascination that makes her so adorable and so terrible? Do you know that French sonnet “La legende de l’absinthe?” He must have loved it well, that poet. Here are his witnesses. Apollon, qui pleurait le trepas d’Hyacinthe, Ne voulait pas ceder la victoire a la mort. Il fallait que son ame, adepte de l’essor, Trouvat pour la beaute une alchemie plus sainte. Donc de sa main celeste il epuise, il ereinte Les dons les plus subtils de la divine Flore. Leurs corps brises souspirent une exhalaison d’or Dont il nous recueillait la goutte de — l’Absinthe! Aux cavernes blotties, aux palis petillants, Par un, par deux, buvez ce breuvage d’aimant! Car c’est un sortilege, un propos de dictame, Ce vin d’opale pale avortit la misere, Ouvre de la beaute l’intime sanctuaire —Ensorcelle mon coeur, extasie mort ame! What is there in absinthe that makes it a separate cult? The effects of its abuse are totally distinct from those of other stimulants. Even in ruin and in degradation it remains a thing apart: its victims wear a ghastly aureole all their own, and in their peculiar hell yet gloat with a sinister perversion of pride that they are not as other men. But we are not to reckon up the uses of a thing by contemplating the wreckage of its abuse. We do not curse the sea because of occasional disasters to our marines, or refuse axes to our woodsmen because we sympathize with Charles the First or Louis the Sixteenth. So therefore as special vices and dangers pertinent to absinthe, so also do graces and virtues that adorn no other liquor. The word is from the Greek apsinthion. It means “undrinkable” or, according to some authorities, “undelightful.” In either case, strange paradox! No: for the wormwood draught itself were bitter beyond human endurance; it must be aromatized and mellowed with other herbs. Chief among these is the gracious Melissa, of which the great Paracelsus thought so highly that he incorporated it as the preparation of his Ens Melissa Vitae, which he expected to be an elixir of life and a cure for all diseases, but which in his hands never came to perfection. Then also there are added mint, anise, fennel and hyssop, all holy herbs familiar to all from the Treasury of Hebrew Scripture. And there is even the sacred marjoram which renders man both chaste and passionate; the tender green angelica stalks also infused in this most mystic of concoctions; for like the artemisia absinthium itself it is a plant of Diana, and gives the purity and lucidity, with a touch of the madness, of the Moon; and above all there is the Dittany of Crete of which the eastern Sages say that one flower hath more puissance in high magic than all the other gifts of all the gardens of the world. It is as if the first diviner of absinthe had been indeed a magician intent upon a combination of sacred drugs which should cleanse, fortify and perfume the human soul. And it is no doubt that in the due employment of this liquor such effects are easy to obtain. A single glass seems to render the breathing freer, the spirit lighter, the heart more ardent, soul and mind alike more capable of executing the great task of doing that particular work in the world which the Father may have sent them to perform. Food itself loses its gross qualities in the presence of absinthe and becomes even as manna, operating the sacrament of nutrition without bodily disturbance. Let then the pilgrim enter reverently the shrine, and drink his absinthe as a stirrup-cup; for in the right conception of this life as an ordeal of chivalry lies the foundation of every perfection of philosophy. “Whatsoever ye do, whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God!” applies with singular force to the absintheur. So may he come victorious from the battle of life to be received with tender kisses by some green-robed archangel, and crowned with mystic vervain in the Emerald Gateway of the Golden City of God. VII And now the cafe is beginning to fill up. This little room with its dark green woodwork, its boarded ceiling, its sanded floor, its old pictures, its whole air of sympathy with time, is beginning to exert its magic spell. Here comes a curious child, short and sturdy, with a long blonde pigtail, with a jolly little old man who looks as if he had stepped straight out of the pages of Balzac. Handsome and diminutive, with a fierce mustache almost as big as the rest of him, like a regular little Spanish fighting cock — Frank, the waiter, in his long white apron, struts to them with the glasses of ice-cold pleasure, green as the glaciers themselves. He will stand up bravely with the musicians bye and bye, and sing us a jolly song of old Catalonia. The door swings open again. A tall dark girl, exquisitely slim and snaky, with masses of black hair knotted about her head, comes in. On her arm is a plump woman with hungry eyes, and a mass of Titian red hair. They seem distracted from the outer world, absorbed in some subject of enthralling interest and they drink their aperitif as if in a dream. I ask the mulatto boy who waits at my table (the sleek and lithe black panther!) who they are; but he knows only that one is a cabaret dancer, the other the owner of a cotton plantation up river. At a round table in the middle of the room sits one of the proprietors with a group of friends; he is burly, rubicund, and jolly, the very type of the Shakespearean “Mine host.” Now a party of a dozen merry boys and girls comes in. The old pianist begins to play a dance, and in a moment the whole cafe is caught up in the music of harmonious motion. Yet still the invisible line is drawn about each soul; the dance does not conflict with the absorption of the two strange women, or with my own mood of detachment. Then there is a “little laughing lewd gamine” dressed all in black save for a square white collar. Her smile is broad and free as the sun and her gaze as clean and wholesome and inspiring. There is the big jolly blonde Irish girl in the black velvet beret and coat, and the white boots, chatting with two boys in khaki from the border. There is the Creole girl in pure white cap-a-pie, with her small piquant face and its round button of a nose, and its curious deep rose flush, and its red little mouth, impudently smiling. Around these islands seems to flow as a general tide the more stable life of the quarter. Here are honest good-wives seriously discussing their affairs, and heaven only knows if it be love or the price of sugar which engages them so wholly. There are but a few commonplace and uninteresting elements in the cafe; and these are without exception men. The giant Big Business is a great tyrant! He seizes all the men for slaves, and leaves the women to make shift as best they can for — all that makes life worth living. Candies and American Beauty Roses are of no use in an emergency. So, even in this most favored corner, there is dearth of the kind of men that women need. At the table next to me sits an old, old man. He has done great things in his day, they tell me, an engineer, who first found it possible to dig Artesian wells in the Sahara desert. The Legion of Honor glows red in his shabby surtout. He comes here, one of the many wrecks of the Panama Canal, a piece of jetsam cast up by that tidal wave of speculation and corruption. He is of the old type, the thrifty peasantry; and he has his little income from the Rente. He says that he is too old to cross the ocean — and why should he, with the atmosphere of old France to be had a stone’s throw from his little apartment in Bourbon Street? It is a curious type of house that one finds in this quarter in New Orleans; meagre without, but within one comes unexpectedly upon great spaces, carved wooden balconies on which the rooms open. So he dreams away his honored days in the Old Absinthe House. His rusty black, with its worn red button, is a noble wear. Black, by the way, seems almost universal among the women: is it instinctive good taste? At least, it serves to bring up the general level of good looks. Most American women spoil what little beauty they may have by overdressing. Here there is nothing extravagant, nothing vulgar, none of the near-Paris-gown and the lust-off-Bond-Street hat. Nor is there a single dress to which a Quaker could object. There is neither the mediocrity nor the immodesty of the New York woman, who is tailored or millinered on a garish pattern, with the Eternal Chorus Girl as the Ideal--an ideal which she always attains, though (Heaven knows!) in “society” there are few “front row” types. On the other side of me a splendid stalwart maid, modern in muscle, old only in the subtle and modest fascination of her manner, her face proud, cruel and amorous, shakes her wild tresses of gold in pagan laughter. Her mood is universal as the wind. What can her cavalier be doing to keep her waiting? It is a little mystery which I will not solve for the reader; on the contrary— VIII Yes, it was my own sweetheart (no! not all the magazines can vulgarize that loveliest of words) who was waiting for me to be done with my musings. She comes in silently and stealthily, preening and purring like a great cat, and sits down, and begins to Enjoy. She knows I must never be disturbed until I close my pen. We shall go together to dine at a little Italian restaurant kept by an old navy man, who makes the best ravioli this side of Genoa; then we shall walk the wet and windy streets, rejoicing to feel the warm sub-tropical rain upon our faces. We shall go down to the Mississippi, and watch the lights of the ships, and listen to the tales of travel and adventure of the mariners. There is one tale that moves me greatly; it is like the story of the sentinel of Herculaneum. A cruiser of the U.S. Navy was detailed to Rio de Janeiro. (This was before the days of wireless telegraphy.) The port was in quarantine; the ship had to stand ten miles out to sea. Nevertheless, Yellow Jack managed to come aboard. The men died one by one. There was no way of getting word to Washington; and, as it turned out later, the Navy Department had completely forgotten the existence of the ship. No orders came; the captain stuck to his post for three months. Three months of solitude and death! At last a passing ship was signaled, and the cruiser was moved to happier waters. No doubt the story is a lie; but did that make it less splendid in the telling, as the old scoundrel sat and spat and chewed tobacco? No, we will certainly go down, and ruffle it on the wharves. There is really better fun in life than going to the movies, when you know how to sense Reality. There is beauty in every incident of life; the true and the false, the wise and the foolish, are all one in the eye that beholds all without passion or prejudice: and the secret appears to lie not in the retirement from the world, but in keeping a part of oneself Vestal, sacred, intact, aloof from that self which makes contact with the external universe. In other words, in a separation of that which is and perceives from that which acts and suffers. And the art of doing this is really the art of being an artist. As a rule, it is a birthright; it may perhaps be attained by prayer and fasting; most surely, it can never be bought. But if you have it not. This will be the best way to get it — or something like it. Give up your life completely to the task; sit daily for six hours in the Old Absinthe House, and sip the icy opal; endure till all things change insensibly before your eyes, you changing with them; till you become as gods, knowing good and evil, and that they are not two but one. It may be a long time before the veil lifts; but a moment’s experience of the point of view of the artist is worth a myriad martyrdoms. It solves every problem of life and death — which two also are one. It translates this universe into intelligible terms, relating truly the ego with the non-ego, and recasting the prose of reason in the poetry of soul. Even as the eye of the sculptor beholds his masterpiece already existing in the shapeless mass of marble, needing only the loving kindness of the chisel to cut away the veils of Isis, so you may (perhaps) learn to behold the sum and summit of all grace and glory from this great observatory, the Old Absinthe House of New Orleans. V’la, p’tite chatte; c’est fini, le travail. Foutons le camp!

Arthur Symons, "The Absinthe Drinker"

The Absinthe Drinker Gently I wave the visible world away. Far off, I hear a roar, afar yet near, Far off and strange, a voice is in my ear, And is the voice my own? the words I say Fall strangely, like a dram, across the day; And the dim sunshine is a dream. How clear, New as the world to lovers' eyes, appear The men and women passing on their way! The world is very fair. The hours are all Linked in a dance of mere forgetfulness. I am at peace with god and man. O glide, Sands of the hour-glass that I count not, fall Serenely: scarce I feel your soft caress, Rocked on this dreamy and indifferent tide. Arthur Symons.

Clarence E. Edwords "Bohemian San Francisco"

Bohemian San Francisco "Up in the second story on a large building you may see a sign that tells you meals will be served and rooms provided. One of these is the rendezvous of Anarchists, who gather each evening and discuss the affairs of the world, and how to regulate them. But they are harmless Anarchists in San Francisco, for here they have no wrongs to redress, so they sit and drink their forbidden absinthe, and dream their dreams of fire and sword, while they talk in whispers of what they are going to do to the crowned heads of Europe. It is their dream and we have no quarrel with it or them."

Edwin Asa Dix "A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees"

A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees "The favorite _aperitifs_ are: Price in centimes.[29] Absinthe, mixed with Orgeat and seltzer-water, 50 ... The above sketchy division may perhaps add to the visitor's alien interest in Continental cafe-life, showing something of its system and rationale. These elaborate and varied concoctions, noxious and innoxious, are not, it must be understood, tossed off in the frenzied instantaneity of the American mode; before a tiny glassful of Curacao or sugar and water, the Gallic "knight of the round table" will sit for hours in utter content, reading the papers, talking, smoking, or clicking the inoffensive domino. Intoxication is almost unknown in the better cafes; their patrons may sear their oesophagi with hot Chartreuse, derange the nerves with Absinthe, stimulate themselves hourly with their little cups of black coffee and brandy; but they never get drunk. Frenchmen are temperate, even in their intemperance. An English gin-mill and probably an American bar causes more besotment than a dozen French cafes."

Edwin Dingle "Across China on Foot"

Across China on Foot: "In the daytime, Saigon is as hot as that last bourne whither all evil-doers wander--Englishmen and dogs alone are seen abroad between nine and one. But in the soothing cool of the soft tropical evening, gay-lit boulevards, a magnificent State-subsidized opera-house, alfresco cafes where dawdle the domino-playing absinthe drinkers, the fierce-moustached gendarmes, and innumerable features typically and picturesquely French, induced me easily to believe myself back in the bewildering whirl of the Boulevard des Capucines or des Italiennes. Whether the narrow streets of the native city are clean or dirty, whether garbage heaps lie festering in the broiling sun, sending their disgusting effluvia out to annoy the sense of smell at every turn, the municipality cares not a little bit. Indifference to the well-being of the native pervades it; there is present no progressive prosperity. Every second person I met was, or seemed to be, a Government official. He was dressed in immaculate white clothes of the typical ugly French cut, trimmed elaborately with an _ad libitum_ decoration of gold braid and brass buttons. All was so different from Singapore and Hong-Kong, and one did not feel, in surroundings which made strongly for the _laissez-faire_ of the Frenchman in the East, ashamed of the fact that he was an Englishman."

Eliot Gregory, "Worldy Ways & Byways"

Worldly Ways & Byways "It has been my fate to live a good deal on both sides of the Channel, and nothing is more amusing than to hear the absurdities that are gravely asserted by each of their neighbors. To a Briton, a Frenchman will always be "either tiger or monkey" according to Voltaire; while to the French mind English gravity is only hypocrisy to cover every vice. Nothing pleases him so much as a great scandal in England; he will gleefully bring you a paper containing the account of it, to prove how true is his opinion. It is quite useless to explain to the British mind, as I have often tried to do, that all Frenchmen do not pass their lives drinking absinthe on the boulevards; and as Englishmen seem to leave their morals in a valise at Dover when off for a visit to Paris, to be picked up on their return, it is time lost to try to make a Gaul understand what good husbands and fathers the sons of Albion are."

Emerson Hough "54-40 or Fight"

54-40 or Fight "Dandridge had been taken up by friends of Jackson and Polk and carried into Congress without much plan or objection on either side. Since his arrival at the capital he had been present at few roll-calls, and had voted on fewer measures. His life was given up in the main to one specialty, to-wit: the compounding of a certain beverage, invented by himself, the constituent parts of which were Bourbon whiskey, absinthe, square faced gin and a dash of _eau de vie_. This concoction, over which few shared his own personal enthusiasm, he had christened the Barn-Burner's Dream; although Mr. Dandridge himself was opposed to the tenets of the political party thus entitled--which, by the way, was to get its whimsical name, possibly from Dandridge himself, at the forthcoming Democratic convention of that year. ... "Certainly, certainly," he said; "but please do not disarrange my cravat. Sir, I move you the previous question. Will you have a Dream with me? I construct them now with three additional squirts of the absinthe." He locked his arm in mine."

Emile Gaboriau, "FILE NO. 113"

FILE NO. 113 "The "Bonne Foi" is almost deserted at four o'clock. The hour for coffee is passed, and the hour for absinthe has not yet come. M. Verduret and Prosper could talk at their ease without fear of being overheard by gossiping neighbors. ... Meanwhile, Master Joseph had taken a seat at a table adjoining the one occupied by M. Verduret and Prosper; and, having called for some absinthe, was preparing it by holding the water aloft and slowly dropping it in the glass. ... And, to assist the digestion of this insult, Master Joseph here gulped down a glass of absinthe. ... Night was approaching, and the smoking-room was gradually filling with men who called for absinthe or bitters, and youths who perched themselves up on high stools, and smoked their pipes."

Emile Gaboriau, "The Count's Millions"

The Count's Millions "... M. Casimir personally superintended the work which was intrusted to the grooms, and he was about to return indoors again, when a young man, who had been walking up and down in front of the mansion for more than an hour, hastily approached him. He was a beardless fellow with a strangely wrinkled face, as leaden-tinted as that of a confirmed absinthe-drinker... ... He consulted his watch, and evinced considerable surprise. "Not yet noon!" he exclaimed. "I'm in advance; and as that is the case, give me a glass of absinthe and a newspaper." He was obeyed with far more alacrity than his deceased master had ever required him to show, and he forthwith plunged into the report of the doings at the Bourse, with the eagerness of a man who has an all-sufficient reason for his anxiety in a drawer at home. Having emptied one glass of absinthe, he was about to order a second, when he felt a tap on the shoulder, and on turning round he beheld M. Isidore Fortunat. ... He followed his man closely, for the crowd was very great. Light was coming on, and the gas was lit on all sides. The weather was very mild, and there was not an unoccupied table in front of the cafes, for it was now the absinthe hour. How does it happen that every evening, between five and seven o'clock, every one in Paris who is known--who is somebody or something--can be found between the Passage de l'Opera and the Passage Jouffroy? Hereabout you may hear all the latest news and gossip of the fashionable world, the last political canards--all the incidents of Parisian life which will be recorded by the papers on the following morning. You may learn the price of stocks, and obtain tips for to-morrow's Bourse; ascertain how much Mademoiselle A's necklace cost, and who gave it to her; with the latest news from Prussia; and the name of the bank chairman or cashier who has absconded during the day, and the amount he has taken with him."

Emile Gaboriau, "The Mystery of Orcival"

The Mystery of Orcival ""Ah, Monsieur Lecoq, she was in a dreadful condition. Since the count deserted her she has been constantly falling lower and lower. She sold all she had piece by piece. At last, she mixed with the worst kind of people, drank absinthe, they say, and had nothing to put to her back. When she got any money she spent it on a parcel of hussies instead of buying clothes. ... Mme. Charman's emissary opened the door; there was a loud rustling of silks along the corridor; and Jenny appeared in all her glory. She was no longer the fresh and pretty minx whom Hector had known--the provoking large-eyed Parisian demoiselle, with haughty head and petulant grace. A single year had withered her, as a too hot summer does the roses, and had destroyed her fragile beauty beyond recall. She was not twenty, and still it was hard to discern that she had been charming, and was yet young. For she had grown old like vice; her worn features and hollow cheeks betrayed the dissipations of her life; her eyes had lost their long, languishing lids; her mouth had a pitiful expression of stupefaction; and absinthe had broken the clear tone of her voice. She was richly dressed in a new robe, with a great deal of lace and a jaunty hat; yet she had a wretched expression; she was all besmeared with rouge and paint."

Emile Zola, "L'Assommoir"

L'Assommoir "Coupeau also failed to understand how a man could swallow glasses of brandy and water, one after the other. Brandied fruit, now and again, was not bad. As to absinthe and similar abominations, he never touched them--not he, indeed. His comrades might laugh at him as much as they pleased; he always remained on the other side of the door when they came in to swallow perdition like that. ... Mme Lorilleux and Mme Poisson were both there also. Boche had heard of a cabinetmaker who had danced the polka until he died. He had drunk absinthe."

Emile Zola, "Nana, The Miller's Daughter"

Nana, The Miller's Daughter Nana nearly always found her in bed. Even on the days when Satin wentout to do her marketing she felt so tired on her return upstairs that she flung herself down on the bed and went to sleep again. During the day she dragged herself about and dozed off on chairs. Indeed, she did not emerge from this languid condition till the evening drew on and the gas was lit outside. Nana felt very comfortable at Satin's, sitting doing nothing on the untidy bed, while basins stood about on the floor at her feet and petticoats which had been bemired last night hung over the backs of armchairs and stained them with mud. They had long gossips together and were endlessly confidential, while Satin lay on her stomach in her nightgown, waving her legs above her head and smoking cigarettes as she listened. Sometimes on such afternoons as they had troubles to retail they treated themselves to absinthe in order, as they termed it, "to forget." Satin did not go downstairs or put on a petticoat but simply went and leaned over the banisters and shouted her order to the portress' little girl, a chit of ten, who when she brought up the absinthe in a glass would look furtively at the lady's bare legs. Every conversation led up to one subject--the beastliness of the men. Nana was overpowering on the subject of Fontan. She could not say a dozen words without lapsing into endless repetitions of his sayings and his doings. But Satin, like a good-natured girl, would listen unwearyingly to everlasting accounts of how Nana had watched for him at the window, how they had fallen out over a burnt dish of hash and how they had made it up in bed after hours of silent sulking. In her desire to be always talking about these things Nana had got to tell of every slap that he dealt her. Last week he had given her a swollen eye; nay, the night before he had given her such a box on the ear as to throw her across the night table, and all because he could not find his slippers. And the other woman did not evince any astonishment but blew out cigarette smoke and only paused a moment to remark that, for her part, she always ducked under, which sent the gentleman pretty nearly sprawling. Both of them settled down with a will to these anecdotes about blows; they grew supremely happy and excited over these same idiotic doings about which they told one another a hundred times or more, while they gave themselves up to the soft and pleasing sense of weariness which was sure to follow the drubbings they talked of. It was the delight of rediscussing Fontan's blows and of explaining his works and his ways, down to the very manner in which he took off his boots, which brought Nana back daily to Satin's place. The latter, moreover, used to end by growing sympathetic in her turn and would cite even more violent cases, as, for instance, that of a pastry cook who had left her for dead on the floor. Yet she loved him, in spite of it all! Then came the days on which Nana cried and declared that things could not go on as they were doing. Satin would escort her back to her own door and would linger an hour out in the street to see that he did not murder her. And the next day the two women would rejoice over the reconciliation the whole afternoon through. Yet though they did not say so, they preferred the days when threshings were, so to speak, in the air, for then their comfortable indignation was all the stronger. ... And while a gust of wind lashed the fine rain in their faces she told her beloved the story of Queen Pomare. Oh, she had been a splendid girl once upon a time: all Paris had talked of her beauty. And such devilish go and such cheek! Why, she led the men about like dogs, and great people stood blubbering on her stairs! Now she was in the habit of getting tipsy, and the women round about would make her drink absinthe for the sake of a laugh, after which the street boys would throw stones at her and chase her. In fact, it was a regular smashup; the queen had tumbled into the mud! Nana listened, feeling cold all over. ... The major stopped short in confusion. This old bachelor, wifeless and childless, spent his pay in drink and gambled away at ecarte whatever money his cognac and absinthe left in his pocket. Despite that, however, he was scrupulously honest from a sense of discipline. ... Cartier had died in a singular way. Rumor hinted at a conjugal quarrel, a kick, producing some internal tumor. Whatever may have been the truth, Melanie found herself encumbered with the cafe, which was far from doing a prosperous business. Her husband had wasted his uncle's inheritance in drinking his own absinthe and wearing out the cloth of his own billiard table. For a while it was believed that the widow would have to sell out, but she liked the life and the establishment just as it was. If she could secure a few customers the bigger room might remain deserted. So she limited herself to repapering the divan in white and gold and recovering the benches. She began by entertaining a chemist. Then a vermicelli maker, a lawyer and a retired magistrate put in an appearance; and thus it was that the cafe remained open, although the waiter did not receive twenty orders a day. No objections were raised by the authorities, as appearances were kept up; and, indeed, it was not deemed advisable to interfere, for some respectable folks might have been worried.

Emile Zola, "The Fat and the Thin"

The Fat and the Thin Monsieur Lebigre was the proprietor of a very fine establishment, fitted up in the modern luxurious style. Occupying the right-hand corner of the Rue Pirouette, and looking on to the Rue Rambuteau, it formed, with its four small Norwegian pines in green-painted tubs flanking the doorway, a worthy pendant to the big pork shop of the Quenu-Gradelles. Through the clear glass windows you could see the interior, which was decorated with festoons of foliage, vine branches, and grapes, painted on a soft green ground. The floor was tiled with large black and white squares. At the far end was the yawning cellar entrance, above which rose a spiral staircase hung with red drapery, and leading to the billiard-room on the first floor. The counter or "bar" on the right looked especially rich, and glittered like polished silver. Its zinc-work, hanging with a broad bulging border over the sub-structure of white and red marble, edged it with a rippling sheet of metal as if it were some high altar laden with embroidery. At one end, over a gas stove, stood porcelain pots, decorated with circles of brass, and containing punch and hot wine. At the other extremity was a tall and richly sculptured marble fountain, from which a fine stream of water, so steady and continuous that it looked as though it were motionless, flowed into a basin. In the centre, edged on three sides by the sloping zinc surface of the counter, was a second basin for rinsing and cooling purposes, where quart bottles of draught wine, partially empty, reared their greenish necks. Then on the counter, to the right and left of this central basin, were batches of glasses symmetrically arranged: little glasses for brandy, thick tumblers for draught wine, cup glasses for brandied fruits, glasses for absinthe, glass mugs for beer, and tall goblets, all turned upside down and reflecting the glitter of the counter. On the left, moreover, was a metal urn, serving as a receptacle for gratuities; whilst a similar one on the right bristled with a fan-like arrangement of coffee spoons.

Emile Zola, "Therese Raquin"

Therese Raquin Suddenly on reaching the former Place Saint-Michel, Therese advanced towards a cafe that then formed the corner of the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince. There she seated herself in the centre of a group of women and students, at one of the tables on the pavement, and familiarly shook hands with all this little crowd. Then she called for absinthe. She seemed quite at ease, chatting with a fair young man who no doubt had been waiting for her some time. Two girls came and leant over the table where she sat, addressing her affectionately in their husky voices. Around her, women were smoking cigarettes, men were embracing women in the open street, before the passers-by, who never even turned their heads. Low words and hoarse laughter reached Laurent, who remained motionless in a doorway on the opposite side of the street. When Therese had finished her absinthe, she rose, and leaning on the arm of the fair young man, went down the Rue de la Harpe. Laurent followed them as far as the Rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts, where he noticed them enter a lodging-house. He remained in the middle of the street with his eyes on the front of the building. Presently his wife showed herself for an instant at an open window on the second floor, and he fancied he perceived the hands of the pale young man encircling her waist. Then, the window closed with a sharp clang.

Francis Saltus Saltus, "LINES TO ABSINTHE"

LINES TO ABSINTHE
Francis Saltus Saltus

With wincing sob, and thrilling yell,
Fiends have shed tears, to form thy spell
Which fascinates my soul.
Which makes me toll my own death-knell,
Wafts up the sin, I cannot quell—
And lures me on the road to hell—
With torment as a goal!

Unnerved I kneel at thy command,
How can I e'er thy power withstand?
When, by its cheering might-
Vistas of glory bright and grand,
Glimpses of bliss on Eden's strand—
Swifter than by a wizard's wand—
Loom 'fore my dazzled sight!

How of thy sweets can I e'er tire,
Thy magic sway cease to admire—
When thy pearl drops of green :
Can by their odor calm my ire,
The loftiest, noblest thoughts inspire—
While for the world's good, I aspire,
In dreamy realms unseen.

For, quaffing from thy nectar source,
Spurred by the suaveness of thy force
Of happiness I dream.
My mind floats on in placid course,
I know no sting, I feel no loss—
Believe in naught—scoff at remorse—
•Seek only the supreme.

If weary, from my cark-drugged brain—
Thy potency will banish pain,
And fill my cup of joy.
Ignore I fear—and feel no strain,
Fierce ecstasies that never wane
In thy dear sweets I seek again
All flitting hopes to buoy.

And when in fancies born of air
Ungrateful liquid, free from care—
I sip thy venom dire,
Thou sow'st the seed of death to share
Foul Satan's joy, when young and fair—
Fall reckless in thy tempting snare—
Oh! green and frozen fire!

Outcast and scourge, my tongue is tame,
I have no strength to say I blame—
Thy fatal sway o'er me.
Thy griffin claws my soul will claim,
Thy savor brings a life of shame,
To end alas in one of flame
Torment and agony.

But if in rags my limbs are clad,
And if my face is wan and sad,
Absinthe, I love thee still!
My heart has not alway been bad,
And though the keen world call me mad—
Naught have I had, to make me glad,
Save thy delirious thrill!

Need I e'er food? by thee am fed,
Need I a love? 'tis thee I wed,
My pale and glaucous bride;
And though my nerves be dull as lead
In my clenched hand, alive or dead—
I swear that on my dying bed,
I'll have thee by my side.

Jean Richepin – L’Amour malsain

L’Amour malsain Jean Richepin Non, nous ne savons plus aimer comme nos pères. Ils aimaient en lapins. Nous aimons en vipères. Ils avaient l’amour calme et faisaient des enfants. Nous, nos plaisirs fiévreux ont des nœuds étouffants. Notre bonheur n’est point le fade cataplasme ; C’est le vésicatoire aigu qui donne un spasme. Nous voulons ce qui tord, nous voulons ce qui mord, Et nous fouillons la vie en désirant la mort. La femme de nos vœux est courtisane et sainte, Un mélange infernal d’eau bénite et d’absinthe. Nous cherchons le poison subtil et l’art nouveau Qui nous crispent les sens, les nerfs et le cerveau. Nous sommes dégoûtés de l’épouse placide Dont le baiser n’est pas rongeant comme un acide. Vos amours, ô bourgeois, sont des fromages mous ; Le nôtre, un océan d’alcool plein de remous. Dans ce malström vorace et noir voguons sans trêve Vers le ciel fantastique où fleurit notre rêve ! Tout le vieux monde, ainsi qu’une vieille liqueur Rance au fond d’un flacon, nous fait lever le cœur. Notre espoir, dédaigneux des paradis antiques, Est en route pour des pays transatlantiques. Là-bas, c’est le sol neuf, étrange, absurde, fou ! Nous voulons le trouver, nous ne savons pas où. Mais nous fuyons l’amour ancien comme une geôle, Et notre âpre débauche a l’inconnu pour pôle.

John W. Draper, "A Glass of Absinthe"

A Glass of Absinthe An Ode in Miniature It lay within a glass of green, A sinuous glass of subtle green. It sparkled with a slimy sheen. A languorous fascination gleamed With glint of lapis lazuli; And from its silken surface streamed The scent of musk from Araby. Ah — was that music only dreamed That tinct the drowsy scene? And was my fancy false, or seemed The glass to lure me with its limpid green? My fingers fluttered to the stem, To kiss the fluted, serpent stem, As pious Persians kiss the hem, Enwove with many a wanton trick, Of Persia's deified Sofi. I could not see; the light seemed thick As perfume from the balsam-tree, Or incense in a basalic When sounds a requiem. I drank the draught; my sense was sick; My quivering fingers crushed the curling stem. I dropped the cup of crystal-green; I scattered fragments emerald-green — False emeralds with a glassy sheen. Upon the pavement, how they gleamed! I flung the bits of serpent-stem Upon the table beryl-seamed. I swept them with my garment's hem — Some say I laughed — That night, I dreamed Of Araby — a scene Of sleepy charm whence fragrance streamed; And in mirage, the desert blossomed green. January 16, 1913

Robert Barr, "Purification"

Purification Robert Barr, 1896 Eugene Caspilier sat at one of the metal tables of the Café Egalité, allowing the water from the carafe to filter slowly through a lump of sugar and a perforated spoon into his glass of absinthe. It was not an expression of discontent that was to be seen on the face of Caspilier, but rather a fleeting shade of unhappiness which showed he was a man to whom the world was being unkind. On the opposite side of the little round table sat his friend and sympathizing companion, Henri Lacour. He sipped his absinthe slowly, as absinthe should be sipped, and it was evident that he was deeply concerned with the problem that confronted his comrade. "Why, in Heaven's name, did you marry her? That, surely, was not necessary." Eugene shrugged his shoulders. The shrug said plainly, "Why, indeed? Ask me an easier one." For some moments there was silence between the two. Absinthe is not a liquor to be drunk hastily, or even to be talked over too much in the drinking. Henri did not seem to expect any other reply than the expressive shrug, and each man consumed his beverage dreamily, while the absinthe, in return for this thoughtful consideration, spread over them its benign influence, gradually lifting from their minds all care and worry, dispersing the mental clouds that hover over all men at times, thinning the fog until it disappeared, rather than rolling the vapour away, as the warm sun dissipates into invisibility the opaque morning mists, leaving nothing but clear air all around, and a blue sky overhead. "A man must live," said Caspilier at last; "and the profession of decadent poet is not a lucrative one. Of course, there is undying fame in the future, but then we must have our absinthe in the present. Why did I marry her, you ask? I was the victim of my environment. I must write poetry; to write poetry, I must live; to live, I must have money; to get money, I was forced to marry. Valdoreme is one of the best pastry-cooks in Paris; is it my fault, then, that the Parisians have a greater love for pastry than for poetry ? Am I to blame that her wares are more sought for at her shop than are mine at the booksellers'? I would willingly have shared the income of the shop with her without the folly of marriage, but Valdoreme has strange, barbaric notions which were not overturnable by civilized reason. But my action was not wholly mercenary, nor indeed mainly so. There was a rhythm about her name that pleased me. Then she is a Russian, and my country and hers were at that moment in each others' arms, so I proposed to Valdoreme that we follow the national example. But, alas! Henri, my friend, I find that even ten years' residence in Paris will not eliminate the savage from the nature of a Russian. In spite of the name that sounds like the soft flow of a rich mellow wine, my wife is little better than a barbarian. When I told her about Tenise, she acted like a mad woman—drove me into the streets." “But why did you tell her about Tenise ?" "Pourquoi? How I hate that word! Why! Why !! Why!!! It dogs one's actions like a bloodhound eternally yelping for a reason. It seems to me that all my life I have had to account to an inquiring why. I don't know why I told her; it did not appear to be a matter requiring any thought or consideration. I spoke merely because Tenise came into my mind at the moment. But after that the deluge! I shudder when I think of it." "Again the why?" said the poet's friend. "Why not cease to think of conciliating your wife? Russians are unreasoning aborigines. Why not take up life in a simple poetic way with Tenise, and avoid the Rue de Russ altogether?" Caspilier sighed gently. Here fate struck him hard. "Alas! my friend, it is impossible. Tenise is an artist's model, and those brutes of painters, who get such prices for their daubs, pay her so little each week that her wages would hardly keep me in food and drink. My paper, pens, and ink I can get at the cafés, but how am I to clothe myself? If Valdoreme would but make us a small allowance, we could be so happy. Valdoreme is madame, as I have so often told her, and she owes me something for that; but she actually thinks that because a man is married he should come dutifully home like a bourgeois grocer. She has no poetry, no sense of the needs of a literary man, in her nature." Lacour sorrowfully admitted that the situation had its embarrassments. The first glass of absinthe did not show clearly how they were to be met, but the second brought bravery with it, and he nobly offered to beard the Russian lioness in her den, explain the view Paris took of her unjustifiable conduct, and, if possible, bring her to reason. Caspilier's emotion overcame him, and he wept silently, while his friend, in eloquent language, told how famous authors, whose names were France's proudest possession, had been forgiven by their wives for slight lapses from strict domesticity, and these instances, he said, he would recount to Madame Valdoreme, and so induce her to follow such illustrious examples. The two comrades embraced and separated—the friend, to use his influence and powers of persuasion with Valdoreme; the husband, to tell Tenise how blessed they were in having such a friend to intercede for them; for Tenise, bright little Parisienne that she was, bore no malice against the unreasonable wife of her lover. Henri Lacour paused opposite the pastry-shop on the Rue de Russ that bore the name of "Valdoreme" over the temptingly filled windows. Madame Caspilier had not changed the title of her well-known shop when she gave up her own name. Lacour caught sight of her serving her customers, and he thought she looked more like a Russian princess than a shopkeeper. He wondered now at the preference of his friend for the petite black-haired artist's model. Valdoreme did not seem more than twenty; she was large, and strikingly handsome, with abundant auburn hair that was almost red. Her beautifully moulded chin denoted perhaps too much firmness, and was in striking contrast to the weakness of her husband's lower face. Lacour almost trembled as she seemed to flash one look directly at him, and, for a moment, he feared she had seen him loitering before the window. Her eyes were large, of a limpid amber colour, but deep within them smouldered a fire that Lacour felt he would not care to see blaze up. His task now wore a different aspect from what it had worn in front of the Café Egalité. Hesitating a moment, he passed the shop, and, stopping at a neighbouring café, ordered another glass of absinthe. It is astonishing how rapidly the genial influence of this stimulant departs! Fortified once again, he resolved to act before his courage had time to evaporate, and so, goading himself on with the thought that no man should be afraid to meet any woman, be she Russian or civilized, he entered the shop, making his most polite bow to Madame Caspilier. "I have come, madame," he began, "as the friend of your husband, to talk with you regarding his affairs." "Ah!" said Valdoreme; and Henri saw with dismay the fires deep down in her eyes rekindle. But she merely gave some instructions to an assistant, and, turning to Lacour, asked him to be so good as to follow her. She led him through the shop and up a stair at the back, throwing open a door on the first floor. Lacour entered a neat drawing-room, with windows opening out upon the street. Madame Caspilier seated herself at a table, resting her elbow upon it, shading her eyes with her hand, and yet Lacour felt them searching his very soul. "Sit down," she said. "You are my husband's friend. What have you to say?" Now, it is a difficult thing for a man to tell a beautiful woman that her husband—for the moment—prefers some one else, so Lacour began on generalities. He said a poet might be likened to a butterfly, or perhaps to the more industrious bee, who sipped honey from every flower, and so enriched the world. A poet was a law unto himself, and should not be judged harshly from what might be termed a shopkeeping point of view. Then Lacour, warming to his work, gave many instances where the wives of great men had condoned and even encouraged their husbands' little idiosyncrasies, to the great augmenting of our most valued literature. Now and then, as this eloquent man talked, Valdoreme's eyes seemed to flame dangerously in the shadow, but the woman never moved nor interrupted him while he spoke. When he had finished, her voice sounded cold and unimpassioned, and he felt with relief that the outbreak he had feared was at least postponed. "You would advise me, then," she began, "to do as the wife of that great novelist did, and invite my husband and the woman he admires to my table ?" "Oh, I don't say I could ask you to go so far as that," said Lacour; "but" "I'm no halfway woman. It is all or nothing with me. If I invited my husband to dine with me, I would also invite this creature What is her name? Tenise, you say. Well, I would invite her too. Does she know he is a married man ?" "Yes," cried Lacour, eagerly; "but I assure you, madame, she has nothing but the kindliest feelings towards you. There is no jealousy about Tenise." "How good of her! How very good of her!" said the Russian woman, with such bitterness that Lacour fancied uneasily that he had somehow made an injudicious remark, whereas all his efforts were concentrated in a desire to conciliate and please. "Very well," said Valdoreme, rising. "You may tell my husband that you have been successful in your mission. Tell him that I will provide for them both. Ask them to honour me with their presence at breakfast to-morrow morning at twelve o'clock. If he wants money, as you say, here are two hundred francs, which will perhaps be sufficient for his wants until midday to-morrow." Lacour thanked her with a profuse graciousness that would have delighted any ordinary giver, but Valdoreme stood impassive like a tragedy queen, and seemed only anxious that he should speedily take his departure, now that his errand was done. The heart of the poet was filled with joy when he heard from his friend that at last Valdoreme had come to regard his union with Tenise in the light of reason. Caspilier, as he embraced Lacour, admitted that perhaps there was something to be said for his wife after all. The poet dressed himself with more than usual care on the day of the feast, and Tenise, who accompanied him, put on some of the finery that had been bought with Valdoreme's donation. She confessed that she thought Eugene's wife had acted with consideration towards them, but maintained that she did not wish to meet her, for, judging from Caspilier's account, his wife must be a somewhat formidable and terrifying person ; still she went with him, she said, solely through good nature, and a desire to heal family differences. Tenise would do anything in the cause of domestic peace. The shop assistant told the pair, when they had dismissed the cab, that madame was waiting for them upstairs. In the drawing room Valdoreme was standing with her back to the window like a low-browed goddess, her tawny hair loose over her shoulders, and the pallor of her face made more conspicuous by her costume of unrelieved black. Caspilier, with the grace characteristic of him, swept off his hat, and made a low, deferential bow; but when he straightened himself up, and began to say the complimentary things and poetical phrases he had put together for the occasion at the café the night before, the lurid look of the Russian made his tongue falter; and Tenise, who had never seen a woman of this sort before, laughed a nervous, half-frightened little laugh, and clung closer to her lover than before. The wife was even more forbidding than she had imagined. Valdoreme shuddered slightly when she saw this intimate movement on the part of her rival, and her hand clinched and unclinched convulsively. "Come," she said, cutting short her husband's halting harangue, and sweeping past them, drawing her skirts aside on nearing Tenise, she led the way up to the dining-room, a floor higher. "I'm afraid of her," whimpered Tenise, holding back. "She will poison us." "Nonsense," said Caspilier, in a whisper. "Come along. She is too fond of me to attempt anything of that kind, and you are safe when I am here." Valdoreme sat at the head of the table, with her husband on her right hand, and Tenise on her left. The breakfast was the best either of them had ever tasted. The hostess sat silent, but no second talker was needed when the poet was present. Tenise laughed merrily now and then at his bright sayings, for the excellence of the meal had banished her fears of poison. "What penetrating smell is this that fills the room? Better open the window," said Caspilier. "It is nothing," replied Valdoreme, speaking for the first time since they had sat down. "It is only naphtha. I have had this room cleaned with it. The window won't open, and if it would, we could not hear you talk with the noise from the street." The poet would suffer anything rather than have his eloquence interfered with, so he said no more about the fumes of naphtha. When the coffee was brought in, Valdoreme dismissed the trim little maid who had waited on them. "I have some of your favourite cigarettes here. I will get them." She arose, and, as she went to the table on which the boxes lay, she quietly and deftly locked the door, and, pulling out the key, slipped it into her pocket. "Do you smoke, mademoiselle?" she asked, speaking to Tenise. She had not recognized her presence before. "Sometimes, madame," answered the girl, with a titter. "You will find these cigarettes excellent. My husband's taste in cigarettes is better than in many things. He prefers the Russian to the French." Caspilier laughed loudly. "That's a slap at you, Tenise," he said. " At me? Not so; she speaks of cigarettes, and I myself prefer the Russian, only they are so expensive." A look of strange eagerness came into Valdoreme's expressive face, softened by a touch of supplication. Her eyes were on her husband, but she said rapidly to the girl— "Stop a moment, mademoiselle. Do not light your cigarette until I give the word." Then to her husband she spoke beseechingly in Russian, a language she had taught him in the early months of their marriage. "Eugenio, Eugenio! Don't you see the girl's a fool? How can you care for her? She would be as happy with the first man she met in the street. I—I think only of you. Come back to me, Eugenio." She leaned over the table towards him, and in her vehemence clasped his wrist. The girl watched them both with a smile. It reminded her of a scene in an opera she had heard once in a strange language. The prima donna had looked and pleaded like Valdoreme. Caspilier shrugged his shoulders, but did not withdraw his wrist from her firm grasp. "Why go over the whole weary ground again?" he said. "If it were not Tenise, it would be somebody else. I was never meant for a constant husband, Val. I understood from Lacour that we were to have no more of this nonsense." She slowly relaxed her hold on his unresisting wrist. The old, hard, tragic look came into her face as she drew a deep breath. The fire in the depths of her amber eyes rekindled, as the softness went out of them. "You may light your cigarette now, mademoiselle," she said almost in a whisper to Tenise. "I swear I could light mine in your eyes, Val," cried her husband. "You would make a name for yourself on the stage. I will write a tragedy for you, and we will---" Tenise struck the match. A simultaneous flash of lightning and clap of thunder filled the room. The glass in the window fell clattering into the street. Valdoreme was standing with her back against the door. Tenise, fluttering her helpless little hands before her, tottered shrieking to the broken window. Caspilier, staggered panting to his feet, gasping— "You Russian devil! The key, the key!" He tried to clutch her throat, but she pushed him back. "Go to your Frenchwoman. She's calling for help." Tenise sank by the window, one burning arm over the sill, and was silent. Caspilier, mechanically beating back the fire from his shaking head, whimpering and sobbing, fell against the table, and then went headlong on the floor. Valdoreme, a pillar of fire, swaying gently to and fro before the door, whispered in a voice of agony— "Oh, Eugene, Eugene!" and flung herself like a flaming angel—or fiend—on the prostrate form of the man.