de Lisle, du bon Verlaine. . Du bon anybody and everybody, both in prose and verse. Those scrofulons little stories of his in the Echo de Paris are, in point of mere workmanship, masterly and unique. Altogether, with his extraordinary passion for beauty, and his utter natural obliviousness to anything like that which the modern world calls moral sense, Mendès seems a figure from the days of classical decay.

One is reminded as one hears him speak of that old saying of the "golden mouth. The grace, facility, fluency, freedom of his utterance and expression are quite delicious to hear. He does not talk, but wreathes together, by the hundred, words, as one might wreathe the loveliest flowers. Around and about every subject that they touch, his caressing supple periods, like convolvuli, entwine themselves in graceful adornment. At this moment he is expatiating on Théodore de Banville, and dwelling, with luxurious wealth of term, upon that poet's peculiar "exteriority. Says Mendès: "Banville is exactly what a fruit would be if it were all smooth satin rind, with nothing at all beneath." Villiers de l'Isle Adam achieved something still better in this direction, when he defined Henry Fouquier, the chroniqueur, as a Zero. "And not even the line which circumscribes the Zero. But the empty space circumscribed, the inner nothingness, the interior blank and void."

Of Villiers, it may be truly said that he was faithful to Pousset's unto death. Only a few days before he succumbed to a variety cf ills, among which pennilessness was doubtless the worst, he came as usual to the brasserie and drank three quarts (that is a French word, not an English) because he hadn't enough in his pocket to pay for two demis. Villiers was the author of some tales highly admirable in their way, and of verses among which these, through the sheer force of their expressiveness, have remained present to my mind

"Ses crimes évoqués sont tels qu'on croit

entendre

La crosse des fusils sonner sur le palier." The poet here is not referring to his friend Mendès, as certain uncharitable persons might perhaps be inclined to suppose, but to some imaginary female with whom, of course, Villiers is in love. Her iniquity morbidly attracts him, as the unspeakable

idiocy of the "catoplébas," that animal so stupid that it ate off its own feet, attracted the hermit in Flaubert's Tentation de Saint Antoine. Villiers's powers as a conversationalist were stupendous. His knowledge seemed surpassingly various and vast, for his memory was like the tablets of the Recording Angel, from which no line, no letter, once inscribed, can ever thenceforward be effaced. To request Villiers to recall some verse or couplet out of, for example, Poèmes Barbares or La Légende des Siècles, was not prudent: he would immediately proceed to recite the whole. In his vague quavering monotone, he would render the light and shade effects of a whole long piece, his elocution reminding one somewhat of those great, melancholy yet beautiful frescoes by Puvis de Chavannes, that seem to live with a sort of dream-life of their own. As to whether Villiers was or not really crazy, it is not easy to decide. If he was, it is perhaps a matter for regret that so many other people should be sane. A bald pate, pug-nose, small, twinkling black eyes, and rough, rather long black beard: decidedly this other gentleman looks so like the great Greek sage, Plato's tutor, as to set one thinking for a moment of the doctrine of metempsychosis. Ponchon's genius-he has genius, of course, every one of the men who are gathered here to-night in the literary corner at Pousset's has that-lies in the strange originality of his thought, combined with his terseness, freshness, power of expression. The most difficult of Hugo's rhythms he swings with all the dexterous force of a David twirling his sling. And Stupidity is the great Goliath, which Ponchon's verse hits full in the centre of the forehead every time :

66

Car je le dis et le répète

On n'est pas bon quand on est bêle. That is a small instance of the vigor of his satire.

It was to Ponchon that Verlaine addressed that little beerhouse ode :

66 Bois pour oublier.' One cannot tell whether Ponchon has succeeded in attaining the latter desideratum, but judging from the quantity of little round pieces of felt on the table before him, each separately representing a demi already absorbed, with more demis still coming, one perceives he is at least persistently putting into practice the former part of his friend's poetic advice.

"A

The

And here is Verlaine himself, sitting beside him; Verlaine, the finest French poet of the time. Bald, like Ponchon, but with a beard more closely cropped. A somewhat rough-hewn but expressive nose; ardent eyes, set slightly sideways in the head like a faun's; an eager, sensitive, contorted mouth. Verlaine seems sad. I have never seen him otherwise, unless indeed he was either scornful or enraged. He raises to his seamed and wrinkled brow a withered and slightly trembling hand, and stolidly stares awhile at the big glass of beer before him. quoi penses-tu ?" Ponchon asks. other looks around, and replies in undertones: "A subject. A young man erect in the cart nearing the guillotine. . . . As it passes, a young woman standing by the way looks up at him. Their eyes meet; he smiles. In one long glance she gives herself to him, gives herself body and soul. Strangers a minute before, in that brief instant they live and love the love of years. She runs along a few steps with the cart; takes from her bosom a flower and casts it up toward him, then falls back again among the seething crowd. He catches it, kisses it, and thrusts it down into his breast. Not many seconds later, his head is in the executioner's hand.

But the flower-that yet lies against the heart, now still forever."

Ponchon remains a moment silent.

Jean Richepin, not far off. A somewhat Lucius Verus head, with its curled fleecy shock, black, but besprinkled here and there with snow. Bold features, yet a certain delicacy and fineness about the profile. Richepin since his Sarah Bernhardt days has married and settled down and appears but rarely at the brasseries he used so assiduously to frequent. If he is here to-night at Pousset's, it is doubtless for no other reason than to be sketched by me. There is a rather puffedup look about Richepin's face. His verses

are rather puffed-up too. He is very full of "sound and fury,' of "sound and fury," though not otherwise idiotic, and writes things he entitles Les Blasphèmes. Richepin prides himself on immense, almost brutal power. But at bottom he is sentimental. Sentimental, kind, and weak. He has written an admirable book, Madame André, the story of an ardent, erring young poet, graceful, delicate, frail, and gentle as a woman, yet full of spirit, scorn, and pride. "Jean Richepin'' is, in real life, that young poet's name. One asks oneself if Sarah, who knows men and who assuredly knew this one, would not, if consulted upon the point, concur in my apparently paradoxical estimate of the real character of the truculent blasphemer. "Richepin un mouton qui veut se faire croire enragé. That, or something like that, is what I fancy I can hear the voix d'or saying. Yet, I confess I like Richepin; I have liked him ever since I read his Madame André.

Armand Silvestre, with the graceful smile and somewhat debased expression of the eye. A poet, but devoting the whole of his time and talent to the concoction for high pay of bestially dirty stories in the worst of the Boulevard prints. Grosclaude, a wit of the spasmodic order, whose sole end and object in existence is to make the Gil Blas's readers smile and the diners at club tables roar. Capus, a young writer distinguished for peculiar astringency of esprit, yet afflicted with a sincere lyric sense (he quoted to me once in the streets at three o'clock in the morning the whole of Victor Hugo's Abeilles, with a feeling which l'aïeul himself would have approved), which foible of course Capus carefully conceals. Montjoyeux, another journalist, the type of the irresistible Don Juan. All is fish that comes within the net of Montjoyeux's delightful, graceful da Vincian smile. Not effeminate, not exactly feminine even, but one of those men who appear to have stolen from women whatever is subtlest and finest in their femininity, for the sole purpose and with the sole design of penetrating more surely and more quickly to the very centre of their hearts. centre of their hearts. Montjoyeux, born with and exerting constantly to the full the great Cleopatra instinct, to charm all, always, among the opposite sex. see him as I sat with him one Sunday going to Asnières by train, a white rose in the

I can

buttonhole of his gray frock coat. On the seat in front of us was a girl, timid, only slightly pretty, and quite respectable, although alone. Some governess perhaps, or some première in a nice Rue de la Paix kind of shop. My companion, who knew, naturally, that just then he was looking his best-and Montjoyeux's best is no uninteresting or unattractive thing-bent slightly forward with his air of being so ready to respectfully adore, and mutcly tendered her his flower. She, poor child! blushed suddenly to the whites of her eyes, sat holding Montjoyeux's rose in the palm of her little hand, and on arriving at her destination got out in her confusion on the wrong side of the train. Poor girl, poor child!. Who knows how long and how much she may have dwelt since then upon that little incident in the train, when a man who to her eyes must have seemed as lovable as a god of Greece looked straight down for one moment into the core of her little heart, and smiled, gently, at what he saw there! Oh how much there is, how much in life -if one only comes to think of it-how much that is singularly, strangely, infinitely pathetic! What act, what glance so trivial and slight but that, as by a passing gleam of the " light that never shone on land and sea, it may reveal to us something of the secret magic, the deep mystery, of humanity's nature and fate!

Other figures in Pousset's literary corner Jules Case, a young man of partly English parentage, author of Bonnet Rouge, one of the best albeit least known books of the day in France; Rodolphe Darzens, a long-haired poet of the sensuomystico-symbolic school, he is much more sensual in appearance than he is either of the other things; Gustave Guiches, a small, vivid, gracious face, Dresden China-like in its delicacy of complexion and distinctly marked with genius, genuine if slight; Paul Bonnetain, acute expression of countenance, quite the air of being somebody, and yet so narrowly escaping the being nobody after all; Octave Mirabeau, bold, virile and contemptuous in glance and port, the strongest "temperament" among all the young novelists and free-lances of the press; Henri Mercier, next door to nothing as to results, but as to potentiality simply a giant; an everseething volcano of science, lyrism, satire, passion, poison, and in one word—which

must be a French word, English possessing no equivalent-a raté titanesque.

"Le Café des Ratés," indeed, is what a very clever English friend of mine suggested that Pousset's should be called. But this would hardly be correct, for the real ratés among the geniuses at Pousset's are but few. The majority of them are doing their own work their own way, which means, if anything does, fruition. True, these are the least powerful and least gifted of the lot; in accordance, no doubt, with the fatal law that the greater the genius the less the chances of its coming fully to light. But what then? Is not genius, in the main, self-sufficing; a kingdom, a world, a Heaven, and also, alas, a Hell, unto itself?'

The sitting perforce is drawing to a close. to a close. Final despairing cries for de mis, or even for quarts, for fines, for whiskeys (pronounced here "veeskee"), and especially for kümmel, are unavailing to attract the notice of harassed garçons intent on claiming the settlement of the evening's accounts. "Messieurs, trois heures; on ferme !" shouts a gérant,' the size of his voice in inverse ratio to that of his frame. But still the talk goes on at the literary tables, more fragmentary, more spasmodic now, but perhaps also more brilliant; like quartz broken up very small; the smaller the pieces, the more they shine.

*

*

*

*

"Allons, allons, dépêchons nous, on ferme! Ça va finir mal-comme une pièce de Henri Becque.

"Becque ne vous gênez pas pour lui. Il est parti depuis une heure." "Eh bien, suivons son exemple."

And now the symposium breaks up. Outside, the cool grayness of the morning streets, with, just perceptible in the fleecy sky, the first warm suggestion of a brilliant day. Cabs, of a kind, are still to be had near Pousset's. So some of the literary revellers are driven to baccarat at the clubs, others to supper at the Américain upstairs, others again-a prudent few-home to bed.-Fortnightly Review.

WHATEVER may be the conclusions with regard to Mr. Stanley's expedition at which the nation may ultimately arrive, after a patient study of the sombre and gruesome documents recently submitted to it, in such bewildering and sometimes in such contradictory instalments, there is one conclusion so obvious, yet, for that very reason, so likely to escape notice; so demonstrably true, yet certain to be so fiercely contested, and, hitherto, so rarely acted on; so humiliating to confess, yet so incalculably important for the fair fame, alike in the present and immediate future, of our vast and ever extending Empire, that I am anxious, while the interest in the question is,. or ought be, still at something like fever heat, to call pointed attention to it.

The conclusion I would draw is this. The commonplaces which one has heard a thousand times before, and never more frequently than during the last few weeks, such as that patriotism justifies and requires the "hushing up" of disagreeable

truths; that it is the first duty of an Englishman when his countrymen are accused of evil deeds-not, to suspend his judgment, to hope as long as it is possible to hope, and to condemn them when proved

but, at all hazards, to deny or explain them away; that acts of violence and wrong which every one would condemn, if we were dealing with the stronger races of Europe and in the full light of day, are not so discreditable when we are thrown among the weaker and darker races of Asia and of Africa; finally, that the death of an English officer, especially if it be bravely met among striking and stirring incidents, wipes out, in the judgment of his countrymen, all the crimes that may have preceded it, and that he who brings them, however unwillingly, to the light, is at once ungenerous and unjust-these and other commonplaces of the kind are, I would submit, only not truisms because, as Coleridge would have said, they are "falsisms, they involve the deterioration, slow but

"' and

sure, of all those qualities on which Englishmen, as an Imperial nation dealing with weaker races, have hitherto had most reason to pride themselves.

How deeply rooted and how widely spread such doctrines are, is apparent from the very circumstances under which the story that is now riveting the attention of the world, has been first revealed to it by Mr. Stanley. Mr. Stanley was aware some two years ago, in outline at least, of all the doings which he has only now flashed across the Atlantic. As leader of the expedition, he was inferentially and, in a secondary degree, responsible for all that was done during it. If crimes were committed by his subordinates, when he was hundreds of miles away, crimes such as one would fain hope few Englishmen in a position of responsibility have ever commit ted before; if tortures were inflicted by English gentlemen on the weak and the half-starved, and indignities offered even to the dead, such as it might have required the imagination of a Dante to shadow forth, and the pencil of a Doré to delineate, surely it was his duty, remembering that it was England which he represented, and her honor of which he was the guardian, to denounce them publicly, the moment he had satisfied himself of their reality and their extent, and to cut himself adrift however gravely such a step might reflect on his original selection of his companions, and on the general conduct of the expedition-from any Englishman who had looked calinly on at the atrocities, or had contented himself with a mere verbal protest against them. Yet, there is good reason to suppose, had it not been for the publication of the personal attacks on him by Major Barttelot's brother, that neither he, nor any member of his chosen subordinates of the rear-guard would have ever thought it their duty to inform even their employers-the Emin Relief Committeeof the facts in full; much less, to reveal a syllable of what had happened to the world at large.

Mr. Stanley's attitude speaks for itself; and I would submit that the leader who, first, denies the existence of certain atrocities, having in his possession at the time, overwhelming evidence that they are, in part at least, true; who carries about with him the fateful secret for two years; and then, finally, discloses them, not so much in righteous and overwhelming indignation at the devilries that have been committed, as because the war has been transferred into his own country, and he is himself attacked on widely different grounds, has made himself, to a very serious extent, particeps criminis. Saddening and humiliating as are the disclosures themselves, they are, in my opinion, made more saddening and more humiliating still by the conditions under which they have at last been made.

Nor have there been wanting men in high stations at home-men who, in their private capacity, may be humane and kindly enough, but who have shown by their utterances that it is not the deeds of violence, but their detection, that they most resent. Officers of the army, partly, from a feeling of esprit de corps, which is honorable enough if kept within definite limits, and, partly, from the tendency to forget that professional zeal does not atone for the lack of the more essential moral qualities, are naturally inclined to take a similar view. Sir Redvers Buller, V.C., for instance, in a letter published in Major Barttelot's correspondence, and therefore presumably well weighed before it was published-after dwelling on Major Barttelot's social qualities and professional energy, concludes by the terribly suggestive sentence: "If I could have had five minutes alone with Assad Farran, or whatever his name is, I should be glad." In other words, the poor Syrian interpreter, whose misfortune it was to be present at repeated scenes of foul cruelty, which he was nnable to prevent, and whose crime it is to have given an only too truthful account of them to outsiders, would be treated by this distinguished officer, if only he had him in his power for five minutes, in a manner